It speaks to the naive gullibility of MAGA supporters and their ilk. According to reports, the student who invented this highly profitable identity also tried to create an equivalent liberal influencer — which flopped.

If this for-profit astroturfing sounds unreasonable or unbelievable, or that Canadians would not fall for such fake and politically charged AI slop, consider what is happening in Alberta with the ostensibly rising separatist movement there.

Or not there. Just a little further east.

Well, quite a bit further east.

The Alberta separatist movement’s social media epicentre, as CBC exposed this week, is in the Netherlands. Videos made with voice actors and racking up tens of millions of views are being produced by around 20 YouTube channels in that country.

Between the Lines Canada

Alberta’s Separation Videos Aren’t Being Made by Albertans. A CBC Investigation Just Proved It.

The videos telling Albertans separation is inevitable? Made in the Netherlands. For profit…

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2 days ago · 50 likes · 17 comments · Leni Spooner

It is not hard to connect the dots between who would pay for such an oddly specific social media campaign, and who wants to break up Canada to get out resources. Funding foreign astroturf media campaigns serves the purposes of the same people who take advantage of naive MAGA support in the United States to profit.

While the American government systematically dismantles what’s left of the middle class and its senior officials — or unofficials, in some cases — accept foreign bribes by the billions of dollars in the guise of negotiating internationally, the world’s billionaires are getting richer by leaps and bounds. Right wing supporters are simply too easily fooled to catch on, as “Emily Hart” once again demonstrated.

While “Emily” was a project for a student to make money to pay his bills, Alberta separatism is an American project to steal Canada’s natural resources at firesale prices while convincing us that it is in our own interests.

Dean Blundell

BREAKING: Multiple Sources say the U.S. Ambassador to Canada is Actively "In The Loop" With Trump-aligned/Funded Separatists In Alberta

There is a lie being told to Canadians — not loudly, not recklessly, but carefully and with intent…

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3 months ago · 1395 likes · 106 comments · Dean Blundell

While Alberta premier Danielle Smith appears to being falling for it, it is hard not to wonder what she sees in it for herself. Given her association with shining Conservative lights like Jordan Peterson, Tucker Carlson, and Conrad Black and her efforts to bring about a referendum on Alberta separation, it is far more on-brand to consider that she may not be falling for anything, does not actually care about Alberta’s future, and is pursuing her traitorous work to undermine Canada for personal reasons.

Her close friend and ally Pierre Poilievre has made bread-and-butter issues like our rising grocery prices the mainstay of his messaging, but this week, when presented with an opportunity to address truth in grocery pricing and accountability in the industry, his entire party voted with the grocers.

BC Liberal MP Gurbux Saini introduced a simple private member’s bill entitled “An Act to establish a national framework to improve food price transparency” whose summary reads:

This enactment provides for the development of a national framework respecting grocery pricing and unit price display practices. It also sets out reporting requirements in relation to the framework.

The bill does exactly what it says. It is simple and to the point. But if you listen to the Conservatives tell it, holding grocery chains accountable for the price gouging and deceptive practices many use will simply add red tape and hurt the consumer.

What do “Emily Hart”, Danielle Smith, Pierre Poilievre have in common?

They all prey on people who react emotionally and accept easy-to-swallow sound-bites that have little to do with reality, who don’t take the time or effort to consider whether what they are seeing or hearing is logical, coherent, or in any way truthful.

For many on the right, the very term “thinking critically” is taken with the emphasis on the wrong word. For them, it is built around the verb ‘to criticise’ rather than ‘to think’.

The real world consequences of this gullible naivety, though, are critical. The Americans get unnecessary wars, Canada’s unity, sovereignty, and resources are threatened, and our grocery prices bound out of control — all to the profit of the oligarchs, who most assuredly do not have our best interests at heart.

It is happening again this week, with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s announcement that luxury properties worth over $5 million in the city, which are not used as their primary residence, will be taxed. Reaction from right-leaning people who will never set foot in any such unit, much less own one as a secondary property, is as comical as it is terrifying.

We have seen it over the years in Canada, too. When Justin Trudeau, near the end of his tenure as Prime Minister, planned to raise taxes on capital gains over $250,000, much of the public screamed over the idea of taxes being raised. How many of those objecting will ever make $250,000 in capital gains in a given tax year is not clear, but those upset about it greatly exceeded those impacted by it. The opposition was driven by right-wing think tanks like the Fraser Institute and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

Those impacted by it would have been paying taxes on an additional 16.66% of the profit on their sale, at the top marginal tax rate of 33%. In other words, it would be a 5.5% tax on windfall sales of capital assets, and at that only on the amount above $250,000 in a given tax year. Someone making $500,000 in capital gains in a single fiscal year would have paid up to an additional $13,750 in federal income tax — just 2.75% of that profit. Someone selling their primary residence would generally not be impacted at all, no matter the profit.

Ask the average voter, though, and this proposed policy would have chased off professionals and investors, bankrupted the people, and crashed the Canadian economy as part of an unwarranted wild tax grab by a greedy federal government. It was fed by overstated dire media warnings about how it would impact vast numbers of Canadians. Avoiding the issue altogether, the new Prime Minister promptly cancelled the policy within days of taking in office.

Often, I am told by individuals in conversation that they will support anyone who will lower their taxes, but most have little idea of their own tax burden, what they get for it, or how it is shared across society. Reminding them that the great accomplishments of the 20th century happened when upper tax brackets were over 70% puzzles them, if they believe it at all.

David Graham

The Philanthropy Myth

In a properly functioning society, charity would not need to exist. Food banks, medical foundations, historical societies, and so many other groups and organisations we take for granted as normal charitable organisations are universally a symbol of the failure of our social imagination, a logical conclusion of the common view of government as a negative…

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10 months ago · 18 likes · 2 comments · David Graham

It is the inevitable result of reframing each of us not as a citizen, but as nothing more than a “taxpayer.” The modern use of the term “taxpayer," as with the pro-life movement and our cultural imperative to tip people who are not properly paid to serve customers, has its origins in American post-civil war segregationist racism, as explained by Camille Walsh in a 2021 Mother Jones article:

The taxpayer myth has deep roots, and throughout history it has been intertwined with the idea that all forms of resources from the government belong to white people, to do with as they please.

It makes sense, of course. Those who advocate against paying taxes often frame it around the idea that the poor, code for somehow undeserving minorities, will take disproportionate advantage of the resources of the commons. This is not incidental, it is fundamental to the discussion. Few people object to being the beneficiary of government programs, but many object to those beneficiaries including people they deem as inferior — who they describe as “taxeaters.”

As President Lyndon B. Johnson observed during the civil rights movement:

If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.

It is a critical observation. The right wing, those who opposed civil rights, abortion rights, living wages, and promote the idea that we are all just taxpayers being drained for the benefit of the racially inferior, have built their movement around this concept. They object to DEI policies because these completely undermine the core philosophy that they are fundamentally the better and more important human beings. It is also why they have no objection to the obscene amounts our governments spend on corporate welfare, given who overwhelming run corporations.

White supremacist conservatives have the strongest fundraising machines and a dedicated support that could be described as tribal rather than philosophical among those described by LBJ, and for the reasons described. Their supporters are more than happy to take government hand-outs for themselves provided that others do not get the same treatment.

David Graham

Progressives Lack Ambition

Since the advent of Reaganomics and the rise of the neoliberal movement, the working class in the west have fallen ever-further behind the obscenely rich. We, collectively, have the resources to end homelessness and hunger in our countries. We have the ability to end child poverty, make higher education and public transit free, switch our entire energy …

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7 months ago · 14 likes · David Graham

Those funding these movements and the disinformation environment that feeds them do not necessarily feel the same way — but they do see the structural advantage of a divided population where the poor fight the poorer on racial grounds instead of understanding the actual source of the financial pressures they are enduring.

This class of divided and poorly informed citizens have become so dominant in our political discourse that the so-called “left” in both Canada and the United States are often afraid to substantively challenge them on the fundamental idea of tax fairness or the root causes of the inequities we see. Meanwhile the oligarchs behind the division laugh at their useful-idiot support all the way to the bank.

Mamdani is on the right track. It is time to start dealing head-on with the ever-decreasing contributions our hoarders make to the collective while hiding their money in tax shelters, offering performative philanthropy, and fomenting opportunistic social and racial division to divert attention from their plunder.

The New York mayor’s proposed “pied-à-terre” tax is part of a 375-page document called the “New York City Preliminary Racial Equity Plan.” It is no wonder the modern right and their supporters are so up in arms; it goes against everything they stand for.

In a leaked recording, the now-defeated aspiring Hungarian dictator, Viktor Orbán, compared himself to the mouse in the Aesop fable “the lion and the mouse” as he offered unlimited assistance to Vladimir Putin.

In the full transcript of the October 17th conversation, translated and released by Bloomberg, he is reported to have said:

Vladimir, first of all it is a great honor for us. Of course we are friends. Our friendship began in 2009, when you received me at the St. Petersburg library. But yesterday our friendship rose to such a high level that I can help in any way — there is a story in our Hungarian picture books where a mouse helps a lion. [Both laugh.] I am ready to help immediately.

It is good that we can meet again, because after COVID we have not had regular meetings; before the pandemic we met almost every year. I am very pleased that we can have a personal meeting again. In any matter where I can be of assistance, I am at your service.

The context is as devastating as the words. Their conversation was following a call between Orbán and American president Donald Trump the previous day, in which the Americans had suggested meeting the Russians in Budapest. Putin was already aware of the suggestion, noting in the same conversation:

According to Donald, Budapest is a suitable venue for such meetings because Viktor Orbán is a friend of both of us.

Indeed, Orbán’s Hungary was the Russian-backed model Trump was following for the systematic destruction of American democratic institutions.

The link between Orbán and Putin illustrated by that call, and the link between Orbán and Trump illustrated by last week’s campaign visit to Hungary by American vice president JD Vance, clearly show the strength and nature of this destructive alliance.

Under Orbán, NATO has been obstructed, Europe has been weakened, the defence of Ukraine has been impacted, but, most importantly, Hungary has become the poorest nation in the European Union.

None of this is by accident. The modus operandi of the global hard right movement is to drain resources from entire nations to feed the insatiable appetites of their oligarchs. It is the pursuit of a society split between owners and workers, a return to the worst of medieval feudalism.

A population will not willingly become so subservient without motivation — or an enemy on which to blame for their incipient subservience. In the United States, the war in Iran is designed to create a distracting emergency. The rush to throw racial minorities and immigrants into concentration camps for deportation is about creating the scapegoat around the pain caused by a country whose minimum wage has stayed at $7.25 per hour since before even Orbán came to power. Accounting for inflation, $7.25 US today is the equivalent of just $4.71 US in 2009 dollars, the year the $7.25 rate was set, a real loss of over one third of its effective value. The American oligarchy will not stop pushing this down further until the majority of the population are living in shanties, as the continued drop in real wages amid rising housing costs pressure the working class to do literally anything to survive.

If there is any doubt as to the link between the feudalist movements of Hungary and the United States, Donald Trump publicly endorsed Viktor Orbán in last weekend’s election at the same time as vice president JD Vance went to Hungary to campaign for him while complaining, without any sense of irony, of foreign interference in their election.

The good news in all this is that the voters are on to the movement. In Canada, Pierre Poilievre’s obvious kinship with his brothers-in-oligarchy in the US lost last year’s election, after being the presumed winner for the previous year. All it took was Canadians understanding his relationship with and sympathy for Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.

In Hungary, in spite of 16 years of efforts to suppress the opposition vote and destroy the country’s democratic institutions, the people came out to vote in such vast numbers that even Viktor Orbán could not pretend to have won the election. Nearly 80% of eligible voters cast ballots giving the opposition over two thirds of the seats in their legislature, enough to systematically undo the damage caused by Orbán’s overtly fascist government.

Glass Empires By W. A. Lawrence

Hungary Triggered the Countdown. Trump's Regime Has Already Peaked and the Fall Has Begun.

John Everett Millais, The North-West Passage (1874). Empires often look strongest just before the thaw…

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14 days ago · 46 likes · 5 comments · W. A. Lawrence

In the United States, the MAGA team have been systematically trying to suppress votes and steal this fall’s mid-term elections. The SAVE voter suppression act is intended to keep voters who oppose the MAGA movement away from the polls, and the high turnout and high impact of Hungary’s election is an object lesson in why this matters. An election can only be won by those who can vote. Limit who can vote and you can limit who can win. Taking away this destructive incentive is the principle reason voting should be mandatory.

If the American population follows the Canadian and Hungarian leads in dispensing with their oligarchy and cutting short the path to western feudalism, the opposition may well be strong enough to defeat the MAGA movement this fall with enough force that there can be no pretending otherwise. If Orbán can be forced to concede, maybe even Trump could be forced to acknowledge that the end has arrived.

Defeating Orbán and Trump, though, will not end the problem unless it is dealt with properly and thoroughly. The path to atonement for the United States on the international stage exists, but it is bumpy, and it is not clear that it will be followed.

Those who enabled Orbán and Trump will need to be brought to swift and thorough justice. It is often said that the MAGA movement is a result of the enslavers of the Confederacy never coming to justice for causing the American civil war. It is not too late to right that wrong this time around.

The administration must be held accountable for their war crimes, their crimes against humanity, their theft of national resources, their suppression of rights, and every specific crime committed by everyone at every level of the government. No ICE agent who participated in an illegal raid, imprisonment, or assault should be spared. No oligarch who abused their financial power to destroy the working class should be allowed to keep their obscene wealth. No supreme court justice who gave license to the president to commit crimes with impunity while hiding behind the presidential seal should be allowed to remain on the bench and out of prison for such patent corruption.

David Graham

Eventually, There Will Be Another Nuremberg

The United States is considering requiring the submission of five years of social media history in order to apply for an Electronic System for Travel Authorization form, a de facto visa that many countries, including Canada, now require. There is no obvious reason to gather the vast quantities of data that would involve, in the current American context…

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4 months ago · 21 likes · 2 comments · David Graham

There can be no moving on as a society unless all of this happens. We cannot allow structures to remain in place, nor our desire to forgive and forget to overwhelm the justice that is required.

Those who seek to destroy democracy, to restore the feudalism of an era we rightly call the Dark Ages, an age of obscene wealth and obscene poverty, must be brought to heel or these defeats will be little more than Pyrrhic victories, granting the oligarchs enough time and space to regroup and come back harder in the next election cycle.

Democracy is fickle. Freedom is not a given. Rights are not guaranteed. Justice is not automatic. It will take a whole population to fix this if we want to prevent it from ever happening again.

As a practical matter, a majority parliament will still largely function as a minority until the majority asserts itself to remake committees. This will be a messy bit of sausage making that will permanently alter the tone in the House of Commons.

The House’s permanent committees each currently have ten members — 5 Liberal, 4 Conservative, and 1 Bloc, except the four committees traditionally chaired by the opposition which have only 4 Liberal members each. This gives the Conservatives and the Bloc together the majority on all committees. This impacts motions, studies, legislation, witness lists, reports, and all the work parliamentary committees do.

To operate as the majority they now have, the Liberal government will have to assert their majority on committees, either increasing the Liberals to 6 members per committee, or, more likely, reducing the Conservatives to 3. This can be done through a motion in the House, which can be debated extensively and will face plenty of dilatory — literally, ‘intended to cause delay’ — motions. You might even see an unscheduled fire drill in West Block, one of the more extreme obstruction tactics observed in the past that can never be quite proven to be anything more than a fascinating coincidence.

It isn’t likely to happen until the three new MPs are sworn in, which is probably about two weeks away. While the government is insisting that they will continue to work across party lines even with a majority, it is unlikely the opposition will go along for that ride. The House is just starting a four-week stretch, and until Tatiana Auguste, Doly Begum, and Danielle Martin are paraded into the chamber in the middle of it, we can expect an uneasy peace as everyone waits for the first shot to be fired.

Once the motion to restructure committees is tabled, and until it is dealt with, the House of Commons will all but cease to function as opposition-controlled committees continue to assert their majorities while they still have them, and opposition parties performatively fight tooth and nail in the chamber to prevent that from changing. In an instant, legislation will come to a grinding halt. Committees will become completely dysfunctional until their restructuring is complete.

In order to end the impasse, the government will be obligated to bring in closure, forcing an end to the debate and bringing about a vote on the motion which, from a practical standpoint, is inevitable in the circumstances.

In that moment, the opposition will begin screaming bloody murder. They will claim that the Mark Carney government, which crossed the line into a majority through last night’s by-elections, bringing them to a majority endorsed by a majority of Canadians in polls, is somehow illegitimate. They will claim that the government is abusing its new-found power, and is somehow anti-democratic. They will accuse the government of stifling debate.

David Graham

That One-Seat Difference

One feature Prime Minister Mark Carney offers Canada more than almost any other is a sense of control and stability. He is on the cusp of capturing the majority government that the general election did not provide just a year ago, as three by-elections follow a fourth floor-crossing. What does it mean for us…

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a month ago · 12 likes · 3 comments · David Graham

With it all, Pierre Poilievre will get what he actually wants: an end to any form of accountability. Facing a majority, he can exercise his one skill — to oppose with impunity. There will be no need to negotiate, no requirement for Conservative members to suddenly find themselves facing technical problems while trying to vote from behind the curtains to prevent an unintended election. His team will no longer have a reason to compromise on legislation or find a way to make committees work.

He will get what he craves most: a toxic Parliamentary work environment where all collaboration and compromise can come to an unceremonious end. And, with it, the prospect of three years of unhinged badgering of the government in an attempt to break their honeymoon.

To get to this point, Poilievre has chased four members of his own caucus out through his obstinance. Chris d’Entremont, Michael Ma, Matt Jeneroux, and Marilyn Gladu all abandoned the Conservatives for the Liberals between November and April, joined by Lori Idlout who crossed from the NDP in the same period. Without them, this majority would not yet exist.

When Marilyn Gladu and Lori Idlout both cross the floor to join the same Liberal caucus, you know the government is on to something. At the Liberal convention in Montreal, nobody pretended that what is happening in the United States is normal, or that things will ever go back to the way they were. It has given partisans on all sides a serious degree of pause, an opening to become serious.

There is a palpable sense that the country is bigger than any one political party, that the moment we are living requires a certain gravitas that the normal cut and thrust of our politics does not offer.

In normal times politics often degrades into a team sport rather than a values proposition. The Conservatives in particular make the whole game of politics about the unity of their team — their tribe, even — take precedence over any deeply philosophical purpose beyond helping that team.

David Graham

Poilievre's Vision: Oppose Everything. Always.

Pierre Poilievre’s latest nation-building idea is a doozie: cancel Alto, the high speed rail link under development for the Quebec City-Toronto corridor. It is not clear why the Conservatives are so intent on keeping us in the dark ages of public infrastructure, but it is clear that if Poilievre sees any form of opposition to a government initiative any…

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23 days ago · 51 likes · 4 comments · David Graham

This time, it is different. In the face of unprecedented foreign threats, Canada has itself become the team. Members of Parliament and Canadians in general with diverse backgrounds and values are coming together with a unity of purpose.

For the Conservatives who still back Poilievre, the American threat is not visible. It is not viscerally understood in the way it is through the rest of Canada. They cannot see it, because the MAGA movement remains integral to the Conservative team; it is precisely who they want to help.

As they continue to see our national politics as little more than a domestic team sport, where winning is their only objective and that at any cost, they will do everything in their power to make Parliament dysfunctional. They will try to paint the Liberal government as illegitimate and undemocratic, and do everything possible to prove it.

The now-majority Liberal government will have the power to act decisively in these unprecedented times, but the spirit of unity that is driving the country forward will be under constant attack. There will be little in the way of the much-needed constructive debate that would be offered by an opposition that is offering an alternative rather than an obstruction. The unhinged toxicity that we experienced from the Conservatives through the Trudeau years will be back with a vengeance, but this time the stakes are higher.

While Carney’s majority government can get down to the serious and difficult work required, Poilievre’s team sees running Canada as little more than a game.

The first is elected: the House of Commons. It exists to bring representatives of every local community together to solve our common problems and guide the country, with renewable mandates requiring constant local engagement. It is their job, first and foremost, to operate as a permanent citizens assembly specifically there to guide our country, plan the use and distribution of our common resources, and look for solutions to the problems identified by the people.

The second is not elected. We call it the Senate. It is an assembly of citizens that exists as a house of “sober second thought.” The sobriety referenced is not from a lack of alcohol. It is from the sober position of having no outside considerations. Senators are appointed for life so that they owe no political favour, free from obligate party direction, away from the influences of donors who may have an interest in the decisions they make, unaffected by the need to plan a source of income after leaving office that may otherwise prevent votes or actions that might impact potential employers.

David Graham

The trouble with electoral reform

The question of electoral reform is one I have been passionate about since the 2007 referendum in Ontario, and a file I have been active on for the entire period. I won't dive into it too deeply unless there is an appetite to discuss it further, as my experience in this matter is that most people who have an opinion on the matter of electoral reform are…

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3 years ago · 5 likes · David Graham

Forcing a citizens assembly to exist, and worse, giving them a mandate to find a way to implement a form of proportional representation is an insult, not a complement, to our democratic processes. Proportional representation trades representation for proportionality. Having members elected purely on the basis of a political party devalues their individual ability to represent their electors. It trades local representation for an abstract idea of fairness.

Under the most commonly advocated mixed-member proportional system, more than half of our MPs continue to be selected by the single member plurality system we already use, which PR advocates claim is broken. The other half are topped up by the party based on the party’s collective support. Not only does this not solve the problems alleged with “first past the post,” it adds the problem of creating Members of Parliament whose existence is entirely at the whim of the party, who do not have any independence of thought or representation. They don’t even need to return constituents’ phone calls because their only actual constituents are at the office of the political party they represent.

Another common solution offered, multi-member ridings, will be devastating to rural Canada. While we cite small European countries with PR as success stories, Canada is a vast expanse of land. Many of our ridings are larger than many European countries. When I served, my riding of Laurentides—Labelle was 19,693 square kilometres. It was the 46th largest riding in the country. Had it been in Europe, it would be the 39th largest country, meaning there are more ridings within Canada than whole European countries larger than mine had been. Under a multi-winner system, adjacent ridings would be combined while keeping multiple local representatives for each.

In a large riding with multiple representatives, those representatives are going to focus on and compete within voter-rich areas. Small communities that already have trouble getting attention from their representatives to solve their issues will have their problems compounded by such a system. Having representatives from multiple parties concurrently existing within each riding will mean that their days will be spent fighting each other locally rather than being part of the national conversation. In the real world, such a scenario is not a healthy set-up, nor is it conducive to genuine local representation. It creates more problems than it solves.

In its purest form, proportional representation exists by simply having parties offer ordered lists of who will be elected based on the percentage of the vote. The MPs selected under such a system serve no purpose whatsoever, other than to be legislative assistants to the leader. If a member strays from the leader’s wishes, being kicked out of their caucus means they lose their seat. If the party diverges from its electoral platform, there is no means of accountability from the caucus, as the caucus has no teeth, no power, no genuine role. It would make more sense in such a system to crowd the leaders around a conference table and weight their votes like corporate shareholders. They are free to hire staff to perform the other roles currently performed by parliamentarians. At least it would avoid the pretence of representatives representing anything more than their party’s whims.

David Graham

Here We Go Again On Electoral Reform

Inevitably, following an election as unusual and dramatic as this one, Canadian political discourse will focus on electoral reform and the perceived unfairness of the results, of the Trudeau promise to change the electoral system, and the need to throw the strategic voting baby out with the democratic bathwater by adopting Mixed Member Proportional. The…

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a year ago · 11 likes · 3 comments · David Graham

A citizens assembly created to select from among these “proportional” systems has neither a genuine mandate from the people to change the electoral system, nor the freedom to explore all the aspects affecting the function and fairness of democracy, nor again all of the electoral options that may or may not qualify under a “proportional” mandate.

If either of our citizens assemblies that already exist lack credibility, or are viewed as unqualified or incapable of addressing questions fundamental to our society like the form and function of our electoral system, then perhaps that is the problem that we need to be solving. If the citizens of the country believe that our MPs lack the independence or competence needed to do their jobs, then the solutions need to be around solving those problems rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

There is a three-pronged approach we can take to solving the perceived ills of our representation in the House of Commons.

The first is to get money out of politics.

David Graham

Private Money In Politics Is The Root Of Our Rot

Nearly all the problems we are facing today share a common root cause: the role of money — and those who have too much of it — in politics…

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3 months ago · 11 likes · 1 comment · David Graham

The second is to provide a preferential ballot so that votes are for rather than against, allowing electors to always vote both their conscience and their reality, and making electoral debate more fundamentally positive by forcing candidates to consider electors’ second choices.

The third is to make voting mandatory, so that campaigns are no longer about identifying and getting out the vote, which opens the door to voter suppression, but rather making campaigns about engagement, ideas, and debate. If the people are going to vote anyway, and they can do so in a ranked order, then the discussion and engagement must then necessarily be on the policies and ideas, rather on the very fact of voting in the first place.

Rather than constantly exploring the creation of a new assembly of random citizens, we should instead be focusing our efforts on ensuring that our two existing citizens assemblies which, together, we call Parliament, are the best they can be.

We are at the point where nearly everyone on Earth knows that the president of the United States belongs in a straitjacket in the secure ward of a mental institution, preferably in the Hague, not in the White House. He says and does things every single day that would disqualify any prior president, Democrat or Republican, from waking up still in office the next morning.

But the American institutional and public response is not only tepid, it is embarrassing on an international scale. The response is limited to memes on social media and the occasional No Kings rallies, after each of which the population return to their day jobs supporting the oligarchy that props up the regime.

The war being waged by the American president on a far-off land does not feel real enough or dangerous enough to a cowed population.

The institutions whose very existence are meant to curtail the power of the presidency are doing the opposite. Those wishing to oppose through legal means find themselves constrained by their constitution, while the president they need to depose shares no such respect for that same foundational document or the ground rules it enumerates.

As many people have died across the Middle East in this pointless war in the last month as died in New York on 9/11. Half of them are civilians. But the dead, for the most part, are not Americans, so opposition is limited to half-assed scheduled protests and the occasional pointed meme.

The Americans see Iran as a country run by a religious autocracy, imposing questionable moral values on their population. But the Americans, too, are a religious autocracy, imposing questionable moral values on their own population.

The Americans see Iran as a country that actively interferes in the politics and stability of other nations. But the Americans, too, actively interfere in the politics and stability of other nations.

The Americans see Iran as a country willing to launch unprovoked attacks on its adversaries. But that is exactly what the Americans have done in this war.

The Americans see the government of Iran as problematic, and the people in need of liberation through regime change. But the American government is just as problematic, and the people are in need of liberation through regime change.

Iran has a higher literacy rate and higher average education than the United States. Unlike the US, the country even has a universal health insurance plan. Meanwhile, the president of the United States says the government cannot afford medicare or child care because it needs to pay for its military, whose 2026 budget including the special requests to pay for this war are estimated at $1.7 trillion — which would make the Pentagon the 15th largest country in the world by GDP.

Popular Information

The $1.7 trillion military budget includes a massive slush fund for Trump’s political allies

Last week, President Donald Trump declared that the federal government cannot afford to spend “any money for day care” because “we’re fighting wars.” According to Trump, the well-being of America’s children is not a concern of the administration. “We have to take c…

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20 days ago · 412 likes · 37 comments · Judd Legum and Noel Sims

It is impossible to look at this war and describe it as just or warranted. Two countries who engage in religious persecution of their more secular populations are going to war for no good reason, but only the United States chose to wage this war. Worse, Iran has been preparing for this moment for generations, hardening defences, alliances, strategy, and tactics against an American attack they assumed would come sooner or later.

No rational president would wage such a war. Nothing tangibly beneficial can be achieved by conducting this war. It exists only to exercise the irrational vision of the rapture and armageddon by the religious fundamentalists controlling the White House and the Pentagon, and to suppress one of history’s worst-ever sex trafficking and child rape scandals in which the president and his closest supporters are at the very core.

There are no good guys in this war. It should not be fought. It serves no purpose. No good can come of it.

Americans will die in this war, if the president continues to prosecute it as he is threatening to do. They will do so in far larger numbers than they realise at this point in the process, as the country completely loses control of a war it started without a plan or a purpose. Whether we want to be or not, other countries will be dragged into it some way, some how, as Iran activates its networks and alliances and weapons systems to force America’s traditional allies to pick sides, in an effort to isolate the dying empire.

The lack of serious and effective opposition in the United States, at all levels, tells the rest of the world that Trump does, in fact, represent the American psyche and the country’s collective self-image and objectives. He is objectively insane, but his country, in spite of numerous processes and methods available to address his abuse of power — power he should never have been allowed to hold in the first place — allow him to continue.

Americans seem to believe Trump’s lunacy is someone else’s problem to solve. Their slacktivism will lead to nuclear confrontation and possibly deployment because nobody thinks they have any role in stopping it. Someone else, surely, will come to their senses and save the country and the world!

They are taught through their education system about American greatness, about American individual and collective heroism, how the good guy always wins — and how Americans are always the good guys. The true lessons of history, plainly visible to the rest of the world, are not learned or understood in a country eager to destroy itself through wilful ignorance.

This is not a matter for this fall’s midterm elections, likely to be stolen by the crippling corruption the country is allowing to fester. It is not even a question that can wait for tomorrow. It is a matter for today, and the people of the United States are simply not rising to the challenge.

Where are they? What are they waiting for?

Thinking about...

The president speaks genocide

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again…

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20 days ago · 1747 likes · 57 comments · Timothy Snyder

As a country, we have been systematically destroying our domestic mass transit infrastructure for decades. Pierre Trudeau created Via Rail, then slashed its routes by 20% and funding by 40% just three years later. Then Brian Mulroney slashed Via Rail with even greater ferocity, cutting it by more than half in 1989. The Chrétien government then cut the Atlantic, Via’s service that ran through Sherbrooke, Quebec to St John, New Brunswick, which happened to be the only two ridings still represented by Progressive Conservative MPs after the 1993 election.

Meanwhile, federal funding for inter-city buses that connected small communities across the country have been slashed repeatedly by governments of all stripes, with regional governments taking over where they are able to. Even Greyhound, the company most closely identified with inter-city buses in North America, gave up and left Canada altogether five years ago.

Throughout it all, Canada has never seriously implemented any kind of coordinated transit system. You cannot open a website or an app, enter two addresses, and make a booking that links municipal or regional buses to inter-city buses or trains to municipal or regional transit systems at the other end. It is up to each traveler to sort out all the different services and connections, tickets, passes, and tokens.

David Graham

A Permanent Universal Transit Token?

If you have ever tried to park downtown in the middle of a weekday in nearly any Canadian city, you’ll find that it is expensive or difficult, often both. But if you have considered taking transit, it’s slow, requires an oddly specific amount of exact change, a ticket you have to ride transit to find a place to buy, or a pass you have to get in advance…

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10 months ago · 7 likes · 4 comments · David Graham

The opportunities are there. In 2011, I traveled around western Europe with a single consolidated EURail pass, one of two such competing services, that let me take virtually any train virtually anywhere across several countries for two weeks, most without additional fees or reservations required. I used it to travel from London to St. Moritz to Venice, starting in the UK and stopping in Belgium, Holland, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, and even dropping in on Liechtenstein, and that for under $800. I could plan all my moves through the German national carrier, Deutsche Bahn’s BlackBerry application, regardless of country or carrier. We could do it here. We just… don’t.

It might be in part because we have so little infrastructure to integrate. Our country is built around the automobile because our country builds the automobile. Driving anywhere is easy. And we have convinced our population that due to our vast distances and low population densities, flying in Canada must be obscenely expensive yet completely necessary while public infrastructure — other than over one million kilometres of roads — is out of the realm of possibility.

It is, of course, an attitude question. Many people who travel from Toronto to Ottawa, as an example, will fly, seeing the one hour flight as a short trip. The time to travel to, through, and from airports rarely factors, but door-to-door time by train or car can be equal or better than flying, and that is before we bring in a project like Alto. Worse, there are at least six flights a day between Montreal and Ottawa lasting just 45 minutes gate-to-gate and reaching a cruising altitude of 12,000 feet as the flights simply aren’t long enough to reach any higher. At that altitude and duration, it is not even necessary to pressurise the cabin. It is the height of absurdity.

Canada has studied high speed passenger trains for generations and there is no guarantee that Alto won’t turn into yet another generational study. Each generation, the projected cost increases exponentially. And each time, Canada balks not only at the direct cost, but at the impacts to the country’s well-heeled oil, automotive, and aviation industries, and succumbs to the NIMBY movements of those on whose land such infrastructure must necessarily cross.

Which takes us back to the Conservative leader. It was the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, that he was a part of, that started reinvesting in passenger rail service, restoring previously cancelled capital funding. It was Stephen Harper’s own parliamentary secretary, Dean del Mastro, who pushed for the very corridor that Alto is exploring.

When he came out earlier this week to announce that a Conservative government would oppose and cancel Alto, he abandoned any remaining principle or ambition he has for Canada. Worse, it is not about the infrastructure, or even the impacts to individual farms whose lands risk being bisected by it.

He could have come out and said he wanted to consider how to build such modern infrastructure in a way that minimises new corridors, reduces impact to land owners and farmers, or any of a dozen variations of that theme. He could have said that it is ridiculous that we are only considering high speed rail between Quebec City and Toronto, when the Edmonton-Calgary-Lethbridge corridor could gain equal benefit from such modern infrastructure.

Metaviews: Future of Authority

296: Alto Demonstrates Meta's Opposition to Democracy

This is part two in an ongoing derailment of the hopes of high speed rail. Part one is here…

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a month ago · 12 likes · 2 comments · Jesse Hirsh

But that is not what he did. He did simple, shallow, division politics as he always does. He saw a NIMBY movement rising in large part thanks to social media algorithms amplifying small pockets of resistance, and he saw an opportunity to oppose, for the sake of opposing. To look for division where little exists, and build on that division for short-term political benefit. Long term vision? Pah! Not for these Conservatives!

Canada has struggled for generations to modernise our infrastructure, repeatedly and destructively failing to arrive at national consensus on how to move forward, falling into short term political traps like this.

In 1994, lest we forget, Ontario premier Bob Rae announced the expansion of Toronto’s subway line westward along Eglinton. A year later, Mike Harris came in on his “common sense revolution” messaging, cancelled the expansion and, to make sure that such ambition dare not be tried again in the future, had the tunnels already dug filled back in.

Poilievre’s opposition is in the same vein. Not only does he want to stop all progress, he wants to ensure any actual achievements are rolled back to the starting line.

To what end?

It will take him some time to connect with Canadians, if he can at all. First impressions matter. I have seen friends who have been long-time members of the NDP walk away since Sunday’s leadership vote in disgust, comparing him to the Waffle movement his grandfather, former NDP leader David Lewis, fought off half a century ago.

The NDP has largely lost its labour base. Unionised labourers, benefitting from years of the fair pay and benefits brought to them by organised labour, often support the Conservatives without a hint of irony, seeking only lower taxes. And on that side, Lewis will have an enormous hill to climb.

Avi and his partner, filmmaker and author Naomi Klein, were key to the launch of the Leap Manifesto going into the 2015 election. That manifesto is built around the statement: “We call for a Canada based on caring for each other and the planet, moving swiftly to a post-carbon future, upholding Indigenous rights, and pursuing economic justice for all.”

The Progress Canada Podcast Substack

Avi Lewis's Vision for Canada

This weekend, Avi Lewis won the NDP leadership with the highest first ballot total of any NDP leader not named Tommy Douglas…

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a month ago · 4 likes · Progress Canada and Theresa Lubowitz

Reading the manifesto’s points objectively, as summarised far more clearly on wikipedia than on their own website, they seem logical, obvious even, as the path forward for Canada:

1. Fully implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

2. A shift to a “100% clean energy economy” by 2050

3. A moratorium on new fossil fuel infrastructure projects

4. Support for community-owned clean energy projects

5. A universal program for energy efficiency and retrofitting, prioritizing low income communities

6. High-speed rail and affordable, nation-wide public transit

7. Re-training and resources for workers in carbon-intensive industries

8. A national infrastructure-renewal program

9. An overhaul of the agricultural industry, prioritizing local production

10. A moratorium on international trade deals that infringe upon democratic rights

11. Immigration status and full legal protection for all workers, including immigrants and refugees

12. Investment in expanding “low-carbon” sectors of the economy, including through the development of a national childcare program

13. A “vigorous debate” on the implementation of a universal basic income

14. An end to austerity and subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, paid for with cuts to military spending and robust progressive, wealth, and corporate taxation

15. An end to corporate funding of political campaigns and examination of voting reform

In the current threat environment, cutting military spending would not be wise for Canada, and so too each point has to be considered as a discrete debate from the point of view of reality. However many stop at the word ‘manifesto’ and assume it to be radical. One need not agree with every point to see the overall objective of taking power away from the ultra wealthy and returning it to the people, which upon looking south of the border at the opposite should not be considered terribly radical as a desirable outcome.

The real win for Canada though in Avi Lewis’s weekend victory is in what he offers that Pierre Poilievre does not: ideas. Agree with them or disagree with them, at least he has them.

In the 2016 election in the United States, Donald Trump turned the election into a referendum on the status quo. The Democrats fell for it, vigorously defending a status quo that more and more Americans saw as the problem. They pushed out Bernie Sanders and the “radical left” of their party who were and are advocating for what are largely common-sense policies that help the average citizen rather than the ruling class.

David Graham

The ever-increasing dichotomy of America

Seven years ago, Donald Trump was elected 45th President of the United States. And he’s trying to come back for another round. The forces that brought him to power in 2016 have not disappeared, and they are not unique to the United States; they’re very much relevant to Canada as well…

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2 years ago · 4 likes · 3 comments · David Graham

In what could have been a major policy debate for the United States on Sanders’ vs Trump’s vision for how to replace the status quo with something better, to deal with rising angst across their country, the ballot question Trump wanted triumphed, and the status quo was itself defeated. The Democrats, never understanding what happened, presented the status quo again in 2020 and 2024 and, sure enough, Americans said to the Democrats: no, you’re still not getting the point.

Mark Carney is seen as a reformer, but he is a completely different kind of reformer from Avi Lewis. He is a pragmatic centrist, crisis managing Canada away from the havoc and destruction Trump has brought to bear on the world since his return to office last year. Carney is getting it right on the macro points; he is setting up Canada to survive in a post-American world. In an environment where we are only a single misstep from finding ourselves at war with our American neighbours, he will make the tough and necessary decisions necessary to protect our sovereignty and our economy going forward.

In short, and fortunately for Canada, he is here at the right moment in our history. In the face of a functioning, stable, progressive United States, Carney would have been seen as the status quo candidate, there to protect the profoundly unradical centre, to keep the boring and stable boring and stable. In that world, he would not have been a reformer.

For his part, Lewis offers the NDP a chance to bring a conscience back to Parliament and to Canadian political discourse, a role the NDP has largely abandoned since Jack Layton and Stephen Harper worked together to polarise Canadian politics and squeeze out the centre, in the pursuit of mutually-beneficial left-right power swings as we see in so many other countries.

As we get past the pure survival mode that we are in as a country today, and start considering domestic policies to get rid of the voter angst that has given rise to the MAGA and Maple MAGA movements, there will be a need for serious, deep, structural policy discussions. The status quo remains untenable and Canadians will run out of patience if we do not materially address that fact.

Having Lewis at the helm of the NDP will give Canadians an opportunity to have a genuine debate on the path forward on each issue to come up, to gently start pulling the country back across the centre and toward the left, toward benefitting the many over the wealthy, to showing strength in unity over division. While Poilievre attacks Canada and its government, offering nothing of substance and never-ending regression, Lewis has an opportunity to be the voice in the House — once he figures out how to get there — to say: what about this, instead?

Canadians don’t have to agree with his ideas, but as a country we may find it refreshing to finally have an adult conversation around public policy. If Lewis brings that approach to his leadership — and avoids the many landmines that elements of his own party will place in his path — he may greatly exceed current expectations.

The Walrus

Avi Lewis Takes Over a Diminished NDP. Can He Make It a Force Again?

This story was originally published on thewalrus.ca…

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a month ago · 32 likes · The Walrus

The lesson for Canada’s two principle groups of separatists in Alberta and Quebec have largely been missed. Fortunately for Canada, not everyone is oblivious to the consequences of ignoring the basic idea that we are stronger together, working with likeminded allies, friends, and neighbours.

We are also fortunate that one of the people involved in saving the UK from themselves following the national self-immolation of the Brexit referendum is now the Prime Minister of Canada. He was there, he saw the consequences, and he did what he could to cushion the blow within his powers as the politically neutral governor of the Bank of England.

Since taking his place at the head of our government, he has gotten to work building on the network he had already established, and Canada’s ties with Europe are closer than they have been in generations. At a time when the United States has gone from our reliable neighbour, military ally, and economic partner to an international pariah state, the timing could not have been better.

The Walrus

Canada Once Had Nukes. We Might Need to Bring Them Back

Victority / iStock…

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a month ago · 23 likes · The Walrus

Europe was weakened at a critical moment by the successful campaign to cleave the UK out of the union. For over three years they had the opportunity to revisit the question and change their minds, and, in spite of ample evidence of foreign interference and a fundamentally dishonest campaign, just as the world entered into the Covid era, they sealed the deal on January 31st, 2020.

Clause 5 of article 50 of the Treaty on European Union reads:

If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.

So the British position is not irreversible. But an entire country accepting that it collectively made a bad decision in front of the world is not a regular occurrence. Just ask the Americans who won’t even turf a president who is completely and obviously off his rocker.

In the wider context though, the United Kingdom’s loss can be Canada’s gain. Canada is not, strictly speaking, a European state. We have more than twice the land area of the entire union combined, but none of our land is on European soil. Our culture is among the most European of non-European countries, but is nevertheless discrete.

We should have a serious conversation around the possibility of, in some way, joining the European Union. Article 2 of their treaty states the core values of the union, and Canada conforms completely to these core principles.

The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail.

The United States, in contrast, no longer conforms to a number of these values, and it must force us to question our relationship with them and the values it represents.

Article 49 starts:

Any European State which respects the values referred to in Article 2 and is committed to promoting them may apply to become a member of the Union.

We might have to play up our 1.2-km long border with Denmark on Hans Island and the 90 minute ferry ride from Fortune, Newfoundland to St. Pierre, France to establish our credentials as a European State, but consider what it would mean for our country.

Concis Canada

Canada Cannot Keep Stringing Saab Along

SAAB, the $36 billion Swedish aerospace and defence major, has been trying to pull Canada in as a partner for at least four years — roughly 62 months…

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a month ago · 114 likes · 30 comments · Shankar Narayan

We have been equivocating for the past year on abandoning the American F-35 due to our structural dependence on the United States. We are under constant pressure to conform to American cultural law on items such as right to repair and the life+70 year copyright term. We are beholden to American technology on a wide range of products and services — even this essay is written through SubStack, based in the US, and there is a good chance you are reading it through US-based gmail on your Chinese-built American iPhone or through American social media giant Meta.

If you have a new iPhone, you will notice that it has a USB-C charging port, after years of Apple forcing us onto their proprietary chargers. That is thanks to pressure from the collective power of Europe. You may find have heard of the right to be forgotten. Thank you European Union. You might have heard of the General Data Protection Regulations or had to agree to cookies on websites you did not realise were feeding them to you. Thank you European Union.

Then you might have gone to facebook and tried to share an interesting news story and run into the message “In response to Canadian government legislation, news content can’t be viewed in Canada.”

The continental alliance provides Europe with a powerful regulatory bloc capable of forcing compliance by American mega-corporations where Canada is laughed out of the room. Being integrated with the United States without a counterweight on these matters does not help us, it makes it difficult to make decisions that affect our own sovereignty, and it weakens us as a country and as a people. We are not integrated with the United States, we are subservient to the United States.

The Saab Gripen is a wonderful example of this. The F-35 is clearly an inappropriate and overpriced weapon for Canada. Its main selling point, that it is stealth, has already proven of limited use as Iran has already managed to hit one in combat. The high priced technology will be out of date long before the planes reach the end of their service lives. But we are under enormous pressure from the United States to buy into this over-priced ecosystem, as a payment against the on-going American protection racket.

We are stalling on making a decision on buying the Gripen, or considering other foreign aircraft like the French Rafale, because doing so forces us to confront the question head on of what our relationship with the United States actually means, and where is it headed.

Former Prime Minister John Turner was ahead of his time in warning of the consequences of becoming an American client state.

From outside the European Union, we lack the foundation on which to make decisions that do not please the Americans, and so our equivocation on buying this American albatross approaches its fourth decade. As part of the EU we would be the 4th largest country by population; a partner rather than a servant.

It is the Europeans themselves suggesting Canada think about joining the EU. They might be framing it as a joke, but there is a certain truth underlying the humour.

SAGE

Guest Column: Canada Should Join the European Political Community

Stéphane Dion is the Diplomat in Residence at the Université de Montréal as well as a former envoy to the European Union…

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a month ago · 56 likes · 10 comments

Since February 14th, American Congress has been at an impasse over funding the department of homeland security, resulting most visibly in unpaid airport security officers quitting by the hundreds and screening lineups with waits up to six hours causing travel mayhem. The solution? Send Immigration and Customs Enforcement — Trump’s secret police — to 14 of the country’s largest airports to “help”. During this partial government shutdown, ICE agents are paid; TSA agents are not.

The use of ICE agents in this scenario is not an accident. The impasse in Congress has the Democrats on one side demanding accountability for ICE, and the Republicans refusing to fund DHS until the SAVE Act is law.

The SAVE Act stands for the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility” act and is a voter suppression tool designed to require presentation of proof-of-citizenship documents to vote, including a passport or a birth certificate. It is estimated that as many as 69 million women whose married names do not match their birth names will be disenfranchised by this bill, among many targeted groups that are less inclined to support MAGA candidates.

The link between the deployment of ICE and voting rights is not pure symbolism. It is, according to Donald Trump confidante Steve Bannon, a trial balloon for the deployment of ICE agents in this fall’s midterm elections.

Weaponized

Steve Bannon: ICE agents at airports are “test run” for midterm elections

Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon suggested on his podcast Monday that the deployment of ICE agents at US airports could serve as a “go test run” for the upcoming midterm elections. The comments come just days after Trump’s nominee for DHS secretary, Markwayne Mullin…

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a month ago · 13 likes · 2 comments · Caroline Orr Bueno, PhD

While laying the groundwork to deploy the secret police to take over every-day security applications like airport screening, getting people used to seeing them everywhere ahead of elections they want to “protect," the Trump regime is, lest we forget, waging a full-scale war against a far-off country that American media and movies have spent years conditioning the people to see as the enemy. Blockbusters like Tom Cruise’s runaway success Top Gun: Maverick romanticise war with Iran while being careful never to name the country. Wikipedia’s plot description for the movie should sound eerily familiar:

The Navy has been ordered to destroy an unsanctioned uranium enrichment plant in an unnamed foreign country before it becomes operational. The plant, located in an underground bunker at the end of a canyon, is defended by surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), GPS jammers, fifth-generation Su-57 fighters, and F-14 Tomcats.

Iran is the only country in the world outside of the United States ever to have operated the F-14 Tomcat, after President Nixon sold 79 of them to the Shah in 1970, making the reference unmistakable.

Trump has long been interested in having a war with, well, anyone. He does not have a strong grasp of international politics, but he does understand that war is excellent at getting two things he likes very much: money and power. So when his two most capable kompromat-backed handlers, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pointed him toward Iran, it was not a hard sell.

At first it did not make sense to me why the Russians would want the United States to attack Iran, their reliable and steadfast ally in their own war against Ukraine. As the dumbest war waged by the dumbest president approaches its first month, the ambiguity in purpose, at least for Putin, has entirely melted away.

The wars in Iran and Ukraine are the same war. They are united. Breaking the back of the allies who are providing aid and intelligence to the Ukrainians has long been a priority for Russia, and convincing the Americans to attack Iran diverts resources away from Ukraine without driving Iran out of Russia’s partnership, as their interdependence necessarily deepens.

The key though has been in the Trump administration’s decision to relieve sanctions against both Iran and Russia in order to get control of the skyrocketing price of oil. The effect is obvious. Trump is allowing direct funding of both Iran and Russia’s militaries while draining America’s own coffers.

It should go without saying that the United States government asking their congress for $200,000,000,000 dollars, on top of the existing trillion-dollar-a-year military budget, to wage a pointless and unwinnable war against a powerful far-off adversary that exists as an adversary primarily due to American actions in the first place is deeply troubling.

This quagmire will be deep, and is part of a multi-generational tit-for-tat. After the Soviet Union supported North Vietnam against the United States, helping make it a disastrous quagmire for the Americans, the United States supported Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, making it in turn a disastrous quagmire that played a role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. With the west supporting Ukraine helping to make it a quagmire for Russia, Russia is supporting Iran in an effort to make it a quagmire for the United States.

But for Trump, none of it matters. He has his war. The worse it goes, the better it is for him. He needs the American people to be focused on and distracted by the war, and an air war alone won’t achieve that. Tens of thousands of American soldiers are headed to the Middle East in what is an obvious escalation in preparation for a bloody ground war for which Iran has been preparing for decades.

He needs Iran to push back, to focus the American mind on the escalating conflict, lest they see what his other hand is doing.

That, you may recall after getting distracted by several paragraphs on a war with Iran, is setting up his domestic security infrastructure to steal the fall elections, for which he is practicing at airports.

I disagree wholeheartedly with the view that we are safe from attack. The United States under Trump does not see Canada as a foreign country, much less as an untouchable partner. They see our sovereignty as an obstruction, our resources as theirs for the taking. Our territory as part of their ‘manifest destiny' within the Donroe Doctrine.

David Graham

Venezuela, Canada, and the Donroe Doctrine

Yesterday’s illegal and violent annexation of Venezuela should dispel any remaining notion that the United States is a functioning democratic country worthy of any form of respect on the world stage. This was Trump’s Czechoslovakia and Canada is precariously positioned as his Austria…

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4 months ago · 34 likes · 2 comments · David Graham

The people of the United States chose his leadership and this path with their eyes open. Trust between our countries has been completely shattered and will take generations to heal, if it ever can.

The threat to Canada from the United States is far more serious and severe than most Canadians are willing to consider. It feels and sounds entirely too far-fetched; it is simply too far outside of our experience. We are too socially, politically, economically, militarily integrated to ever imagine fighting.

Individual Americans do not want to go to war with Canada. Individual Canadians cannot even imagine fighting the folks next door. It is never the average citizen that creates a war — but it is always the average citizen who must fight it.

A United States willing to starve the entire population of Cuba, decapitate Venezuela, wage full scale war against Iran, threaten Greenland, mock and insult its allies, ignore its treaties, and restore the idea of manifest destiny, all while withholding support from Ukraine and removing sanctions from a Russia for whose leader they will roll out the red carpet is not a United States we can see as an ally.

When the United States threatened Greenland just two months ago, Western Europe took it so seriously that they set up a hastily organised military exercise on the island. Danish troops traveled with ready-to-use blood transfusions and explosive charges to sabotage their own infrastructure to prevent the Americans from using it. France and other allies put troops on the ground and planes in the air, ready to be engaged by the United States to force such an attack to be a war against them as well.

Dean Blundell

BREAKING: Denmark And Its Allies Were Prepared To Go To War With The US - Ready to Blow Up Runways, Bridges And Roads, Denmark Wasn't Practicing - They Were Preparing

March 19, 2026…

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a month ago · 1550 likes · 69 comments · Dean Blundell

The United States cannot be trusted not to simply seize access, infrastructure, natural resources, or territory that they feel is owed to or belongs to them. That is the whole point of the Donroe Doctrine. The United States is unlikely to launch a full-scale ground invasion into Canada, but on their current trajectory they will simply take what they want, and we will twist ourselves into pretzels to explain how it was not an act of war in order to maintain the illusion of partnership.

They want our water. They want our oil. They want our rare earth minerals and our many other natural resources. They demand we use their products and weapons, and we are resisting, building new and improved partnerships elsewhere. They do not want us to build stronger ties with our international allies outside of American control. These are standard ingredients for war going back centuries, and wars tend to be between neighbours far more than against far-off lands.

After failing to win their wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the doomed war they are waging in Iran will not prevent them from looking to pick other fights. The war itself is the point; it enriches the owners of their defence and energy industries, it raises the prices on everything, and it impoverishes and controls what they see as the serf class — who must then join the military or face starvation.

Their country did not even bother with any serious pretence to justify their current war with Iran. Underestimating their opponent has shaken the world oil market dramatically. We are already seeing it at the pump. In response, the Americans have suspended sanctions against both Russia and Iran, directly funding their own adversaries, and showing a need for the Venezuelan oil they tried to steal and the Canadian oil they see as their own.

These people are not playing chess, they are playing Russian Roulette with a semi-automatic pistol. Their decisions are neither considered nor rational. If the American president were to be arrested for his myriad crimes today, he could reasonably expect to get off on the grounds of being mentally unfit to strand trial.

War with the United States would not look like a Hollywood action flick in any real sense, though it may resemble Michael Moore’s 1995 prescient satire Canadian Bacon. Such a conflict would probably start subtly. It would come as an oops moment, and then another, appearing somehow justifiable. It might not even be deliberate; just an escaped thought from the same deranged president who told Americans to inject themselves with bleach to cure Covid, interpreted by his yes-men as an order.

It would test the limits of our tolerance, of the Canadian habit of apologising after someone steps on our toes. It would be placing legally-present Canadian children in immigration detention centres and daring us to react. It would be the American government sending soldiers to “protect” Canadian infrastructure without an invitation, while being welcomed and supported by traitors like Alberta’s separatists and the Joe Rogan-embracing Conservative party.

An oil sand pit, an off-shore oil rig, a pipeline, or perhaps a hydroelectric dam would suddenly be secured by American troops and declared safe from an unknown enemy, forcing ‘compensation’ for their service by directing its output south. Eventually something would blow up as the protection racket expands as we contest America’s unwanted advances, and their lawless leader sees personal riches in continuing.

Our European allies may be sympathetic, but they would not be in a position to meaningfully help with the merging wars of Ukraine and Iran continuing to drain attention and resources.

Unless the American people finally and forcibly reclaim their own country through serious action rather than the occasional weekend protest, Canada would eventually have to decide if we are going to accept to be slowly but surely annexed into the United States, or if we will resist. If we choose to assert our sovereignty, we will eventually be at war. If we do not, we will not find peace.

War is not desirable, but it is plausible. We need to stop pretending that the United States of 2026 is the nice neighbour we used to play with, and plan accordingly.

Canada has only had three governments backed by majority parliaments this century, including Jean Chrétien’s final term. In 2004, 2006, 2008, 2019, 2021, and 2023, Canadians chose minority parliaments with all the uncertainty, brinksmanship, and the constant threat of election that comes with them.

When Stephen Harper won his only majority in the 2011 election, I was serving as the data chair on the campaign of an Ottawa-area MP in whose office I had worked for less than a month before the government fell. After the end of voting, scrutineers returned with local data from each of the polls. I plugged the numbers from the papers they brought into a spreadsheet to make sure our own assessment matched the preliminary public results, providing granular data in near real time. On the television playing in the background a Conservative majority was projected, and there was palpable relief in the room, even though it was not our majority.

David Graham

Entering the Ottawa bubble

Even before I left Guelph, I began helping Jean-Marc Lacoste, the nominated Liberal candidate for my home riding of Laurentides–Labelle, having met him on my last visit before moving in the spring of 2010…

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2 years ago · 3 likes · David Graham

After seven years of serving as an MP in consecutive minority parliaments, my candidate in the election, David McGuinty, stood in front of a burgeoning room full of dedicated volunteers and started his speech: “Have you heard the news? We won!”

Both cheeky and accurate, those seven words spoke volumes and have been stuck in my head ever since.

In our system, we do not have one election across the country, rather we have one election in each of the then-308 ridings, now up to 343. The local candidates matter. Not as much as they should, of course, but they do. While the Liberal party collapsed to just 34 seats that night, my candidate had been one of the party’s very few survivors.

It meant that I, as a brand new Hill staffer who, while I had worked in a constituency office, had had a paid position in Ottawa for a mere 28 days, might also survive while hundreds of staffers from defeated MPs and the shrunk leader’s, Whip’s, and House Leader’s offices were sent packing. As well as more than half of caucus, the leader, Michael Ignatieff, and the Whip, Marcel Proulx, had both been defeated.

As the party’s House Leader, McGuinty was the only surviving House officer and had the unenviable task of making the cuts in the three offices whose caucus-size-based budgets had been slashed by more than half. A few weeks later, when my own part-time position was confirmed, I felt a kind of survivor’s guilt. How had I survived when so many far more experienced staffers had been let go?

David Graham

Survivor's Guilt

After the 2011 election, McGuinty’s job was to go through the painful process of laying off nearly all the staff from the Office of the Leader of the Opposition, which we no longer held, the Whip’s Office, and the House Leader’s Office. Some 200 Liberal staffers in various capacities and offices lost their jobs that night. My timing in coming to the Hil…

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2 years ago · 2 likes · 1 comment · David Graham

There were so many contradictions in what I was seeing that I am still not sure I got it all straight.

We were in a very real sense relieved that there was a majority parliament, despite knowing that the values of the Harper government largely contradicted our own.

Living and working in national politics under minority parliaments is tiring and expensive. Elections Canada has to maintain a high state of election readiness, able to deploy across every riding in the country within hours if the government falls. So does every candidate in every party. Campaign offices need to be planned, along with contingencies as the commercial real estate market carries on. Wealthier campaigns can open permanent campaign offices, but most have to be ready to scramble. Volunteers need to be campaigning and door-knocking to a higher degree and frequency than during a majority term. The parties have to conduct nomination races and keep a roster of candidates and backup candidates available across the entire life of the Parliament, as an election can happen, by accident and without warning, at any time.

Each electoral defeat brought us a new leadership race. Paul Martin’s first election as prime minister saw the majority he inherited reduced to a minority in 2004. Less than two years later, over the 2005-2006 winter holidays, he was defeated and resigned, resulting in the last delegated leadership convention the party held later that year.

David Graham

A Leader I Could Believe In

On April 7th, 2006, former environment minister Stéphane Dion announced his candidacy for Liberal leader, only two years after embarrassing Paul Martin into keeping him in cabinet to continue his work on what was then still more often called global warming…

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2 years ago · 2 likes · 1 comment · David Graham

In 2008, Stéphane Dion won an even smaller caucus, tried hard to hold on and wage a principled fight against an unprincipled prime minister, before being pushed out and replaced in a perfunctory leadership race by Michael Ignatieff in 2009, who brought us to the election in this story and a caucus smaller than the cabinet it challenged. Each race was relatively quick, offering time to update the name at the top but not to properly rebuild the finances, organisation, and values of the party.

A majority offered a break, time to rest and rebuild, to wage a longer and more in depth leadership race. It was nearly two full years between that May, 2011 defeat and Justin Trudeau taking the reins of the party in April, 2013. There was time to rebuild the party’s infrastructure, fundraising, nomination process, voting system, membership rules, and everything else. Trudeau’s team literally threw out the party’s outdated constitution and presented a new one written from scratch for the membership to adopt.

In the face of a majority, there was time.

But here we find the fundamental contradiction of our system. My candidate had won. In the 2011 election, nearly every Liberal candidate who had done so had a strong local profile. Their own brand and work had carried much of the weight of their wins.

For many, the party name had been a liability rather than an asset in that campaign. Of the 34 members of caucus, only 2 were new MPs, in Kingston and Charlottetown, and neither had taken the riding from another party.

In the present by-elections in Toronto and Terrebonne, as in all by-elections, the local candidate is thrust into the spotlight to a much greater degree than in a general election. By-elections are often portrayed in the media as a relatively low-risk referendum on the government, but, having worked on several by-elections, the candidates’ local profiles matter more than normal, not less. And this time the stakes are high.

The Liberal party led by Mark Carney won this century’s 6th minority. Augmented by floor crossings from both the Conservatives and the NDP, three by-elections are likely to push this parliament over the edge from a minority to a majority of just one seat.

I am not aware of any previous instance where a minority was converted to a majority — or vice versa — through floor-crossings and by-elections alone rather than through a general election, but nothing about our current era would suggest that historical precedent is much to go on.

In a minority, especially one so close to the boundary of a majority as we have today, every member of every party has greater autonomy and independence, a stronger voice, more weight to their decisions. A government can live or die on the whim of a single opposition member while government members know the stakes and work together. The need to work across party lines opens the government’s own backbench to collaboration. Nothing can get done without it and an election can happen on any morrow.

The very fact of the four floor crossings is a demonstration of the power of individual members.

David Graham

Floor Crossing Is Part Of Democracy

Nova Scotia MP Chris D’Entremont’s floor crossing last week has put the Conservatives into a bit of a tizzy. When the roles were reversed, they were positively gleeful. Unfortunately for them, floor-crossing is a strength, not a weakness, of Canada’s democracy…

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5 months ago · 12 likes · David Graham

The moment we cross the rubicon into a majority, however, the dynamics completely change on both sides of the aisle.

The opposition is free to oppose whimsically and performatively. The bluster can be stronger. There is no bluff to be called. Against a majority, opposition is, quite frankly, more fun. It becomes consequence-free. Opposition strategists no longer have to decide if they have to support or abstain, or simply hide a couple of members, on a confidence vote to discreetly avoid an election.

A majority offers relief to both a government who can more easily carry out their agenda, and an opposition who no longer needs to live on the knife-edge of standing on principle versus causing or being seen to have caused an unwanted or unneeded election. It is why, in 2011, there was palpable relief that the seven years of minority had ended, even if it was not in our favour.

But for members supporting the government, for those free-willed principled people who, through floor-crossings and by-elections, made an unexpected majority possible, their independence is about to take a torpedo in the engine room.

A majority of one cannot risk disunity. There is no room for dissent when it comes time to vote. A single person walking off the toe-line can break the majority. The unexpected election, prepared for through the minority years, yet no longer apparently on the table, can happen through a simple miscommunication or miscalculation by a single government member. And the opposition can needle mercilessly, trying to break that unity.

The need to work across party lines to accomplish anything gives way to the freedom of the opposition to mercilessly oppose and the government to close ranks and depend on that single-seat majority to function. If committees are adjusted to reflect the majority, government members will be stretched across multiple committees while opposition members find themselves with more free time.

David Graham

The Independence of Parliament

The beginning of the 45th Parliament has been a showcase for the ever-declining independence of our elected representatives. Parliament does not belong to the government; it belongs to its members. The Speaker does not belong to the government; he belongs to the members. Caucus does not belong to the government; it belongs to its members. And the member…

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a year ago · 17 likes · 2 comments · David Graham

Obtaining a majority risks killing the very independence that created it. The role of the backbenchers on all sides risks going from substantive and essential to largely performative. The government will be able to advance its agenda more freely, yet the individual representatives elected in their ridings and choosing the party with which they sit — as our system was designed — risk losing much of their voice.

In our current threat environment, a majority means greater stability and a stronger position on a volatile international stage. It also means that the collective independence of the country will, for now, trump the individual independence of its political representatives.

There are the obvious lessons, such as that the word of the United States no longer holds any weight whatsoever. Twice in a year, the US has attacked Iran during negotiations, now killing the leader of the country while saying progress was being made. Canada should take note. As the Americans like to say: we do not negotiate with terrorists.

The key lesson for us to learn though is on the asymmetry of modern warfare. Iran has successfully shut down a narrow sea passage known as the Strait of Hormuz in a way that the United States’ vast military might cannot prevent.

Shanaka Anslem Perera

Actuarial Warfare: How Seven Insurance Letters Closed the World’s Most Critical Chokepoint and Why Markets Are Mispricing Duration by 300%

By Shanaka Anslem Perera | March 9, 2026…

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2 months ago · 257 likes · 33 comments · Shanaka Anslem Perera

Two American and a British aircraft carrier battle group are in the area, as are numerous other navies. Between them, they can’t protect a single oil tanker. At least six commercial ships have so far been bombed in the strait. All the warships, B-2 stealth bombers, and F-35 fighters in the world aren’t enough to protect them, even though the Iranian air force and navy have likely been all but wiped out. Meanwhile, the price of oil is skyrocketing faster than the number of countries getting dragged into this war.

These related points are the two most important lessons.

The first is that Canada needs to ensure that we are in a position to be detached from the rest of the world on our energy dependence. We are one of the world’s largest producers of oil and natural gas, a net exporter of both, yet our own energy costs are going through the roof due to a war that neither involves us militarily nor impacts our own energy supply.

The second is that were Canada to be attacked by the United States, currently the only country actively threatening us, or any of the other major imperial powers, the first thing that would be targeted is our big and obvious military assets such as our small air force and smaller navy.

It is said that naval strategy is built strategy. The same applies to aerial strategy. In the Second World War, the United States alone built over 300,000 aircraft, and they were only one of several air powers at war. They also built over 2,700 Liberty cargo ships, the standardised convoy vessels to supply Europe, along with around 150 aircraft carriers, and approximately 50,000 Sherman tanks. In a war of attrition, simple, rapid to build designs are essential. None of that could be done with modern western weapons or technology.

The Russian attack on Ukraine and the American attack on Iran are exposing this math with brutal clarity. Having small amounts of complex, high-end military hardware is not worth anything against inexpensive mass-produced weapons, particularly air and sea drones, even if in one-on-one encounters the cheap stuff stands no chance. A war of attrition is a numbers game.

The Ukrainians and the Iranians, while enemies of each other, have fed a drone arms race for the ages. Both are leaders in the field to the point that after ignoring and deriding the Ukrainians since coming to power, the Trump administration is now asking them for help with drone and anti-drone technology in dealing with Iran’s drone swarms, which have been devastating American fixed assets across the Middle East. How the tables have turned.

For Canada again here, there are important lessons to be had. If it takes us 10 years to take delivery of 88 F-35s and only 10 minutes for an adversary to wipe them out in their hangars in a surprise attack, they’re not going to be very useful to us as a defensive weapon. After years of neighbouring countries giving their left-over planes to Ukraine, there would not be much left for our allies to loan us to keep up the fight, nor would we have enough trained combat pilots to fly complex aircraft in an environment of sustained losses.

We need domestic combat air and naval capabilities that will survive as the smaller team in a modern asymmetric warfare environment. That means we need domestic distributed manufacturing capability and technology that can be built in converted warehouses and launched from public roads and innocent-looking marinas and boat ramps with minimal indication of their existence.

Saab’s Gripen, designed to be launched from small rough airfields and with a technology transfer to Canada, is far more likely than the American F-35 to meet that objective, but the real focus has to be on drones and cheaper, simpler weapons. In a modern hot war, a plane that takes a year to build in a known location has little chance of making it from the factory floor all the way to combat, regardless of complexity or cost.

Ukraine is showing that combat aircraft are an important component of the asymmetric war they are waging to defend their country, but both air and sea drones are the bread and butter of their overall military strategy.

For Canada, with an existential and rising military threat from the United States, we need to be ready. Small, inexpensive fighter planes like the Gripen with the speed and range to do basic domestic patrol and defence are appropriate for our current needs, while expensive American jets like the F-35 designed for first-strike attacks against sophisticated adversaries are inappropriate for our broader needs and would be sitting ducks should we be attacked by the aircraft’s own builder. The possibility of our country facing attack or invasion under the unrestrained Donroe doctrine we are already seeing in action cannot be discounted, and we need to be preparing for it.

For generations, the American movie industry has taught us that, in the end, no matter what, the good guy always wins. It is so ingrained in the culture that few can even conceive of an alternate reality where the villains dominate and there’s no superhero taking them down in some epic climax.

It’s false, of course. Those without moral compunction have a distinct advantage and as Canada prepares for a world in which the big powers are returning to medieval might-makes-right conquest-based diplomacy, the only superhero we will have is our own planning and independence, and our capacity to rapidly build and deploy domestic weapons systems and wage asymmetric warfare of our own while our allies face similar challenges.

The war in Iran and the war in Ukraine, which are mirror images of each other and are arguably merging into a common war, are proving beyond any reasonable doubt that the relatively peaceful era that we have enjoyed in the West is coming to a violent end, for which Canada is woefully unprepared.

The Concis

The Democratic Defense of the Strait

The democratic world turned the Budapest Memorandum and the Minsk agreements into a farce. We made promises, signed papers, wrapped ourselves in the language of order and guarantees, and when the time came to act, we wriggled, delayed, hedged, and failed. The United States, Europe, and the wider democratic alliance own that disgrace. And the rest of the world noticed. That is the real cost. Not just the shame, but the lesson: that even when democracies sign their names, even when they issue solemn guarantees, the paper may still be worthless…

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a month ago · 8 likes · Shankar Narayan

Who can blame them? I follow and subscribe to dozens of Substacks and other news sources and my days off are increasingly spent reading articles and essays by numerous writers and content creators calling attention to, analysing, reacting to, and sharing information about events all over the world.

The result is a constant feeling that can best be described as approaching burn-out. How can I raise my young family and do my completely apolitical day job while the world smoulders around us? Ignoring it all would seem to be a very much easier and healthier path.

Sharing what I am reading, sometimes writing to fill in gaps in what I am seeing, trying to get my head around where we are going has become my own way to cope. I cannot ignore what is happening and I cannot handle inaction.

I served as an MP for four years during a period of relative domestic calm and stability after spending most of six years as a relatively junior opposition staffer in the Harper era. I lost my seat to the Bloc candidate months before the Covid pandemic changed the world in ways we are still struggling to grasp. As that crisis began, former colleagues who had won their re-election into that period expressed how lucky I was that I did not have to deal with it.

They and their staff were trapped at home. Their communities faced monumental uncertainty. Phone calls and emails asking ‘when will it end?’ flooded and overwhelmed them, questions for which they had no answers. At first, I felt relieved. I had, in some ways, dodged a bullet.

As our by-then minority government struggled to react quickly enough to salvage the economy and the livelihoods of millions of citizens, they made rapid and difficult decisions that would help in the short term but risk long term consequences. The programs they created risked offering support to people who did not need help in the interests of ensuring that those who did need it would not be unduly obstructed from getting it.

An mRNA vaccine that the scientific community had long planned as the solution to the next pandemic was developed and distributed in record time. The healthcare system was collapsing under the weight of too many patients and not enough treatment options, where putting the contagiously sick in ICUs risked concentrating pathogens and spreading the disease as much as treating its victims.

Using the vaccine to achieve the herd immunity necessary to get the pandemic under control became essential, not so much for the individual survival of young able-bodied people who felt invulnerable to what they saw as a bad cold, but to curb the spread to those whose infections would further crush the healthcare system.

The social distancing, travel restrictions, mask and vaccine mandates at the time were not about eliminating the disease, and they did not pretend to be. They were about slowing the rate of transmission to salvage the healthcare system and allow the creation of a path out of a difficult global pandemic.

People who were not personally impacted by the disease and the healthcare collapse felt it was government overreach. They were being told they could not go out, they could not cross provincial or international borders without papers, they were being forced to accept an injection mandated by their government. Many lost their jobs for refusing to participate. They saw their freedom being attacked, without understanding — or caring — that the collective freedom of the society to function was on the table. They were not following the wider news, only interested in what impacted them directly.

The well-funded disinformation machine that had had recent practice over Brexit and the election of Trump took advantage of this sentiment and wilful ignorance to expand its Canadian footprint. People fearing government overreach and vaccine mandates could be mobilised to destabilise yet another western country. The flames were fanned with near limitless resources.

Pretty soon, an angry mob fed by that machine descended on Ottawa, calling for the fall of the government and the end of the vaccine mandates that were offering us a way to salvage our collapsing healthcare system and break the death spiral of the pandemic.

As I watched it all, as the country rapidly and necessarily redrew its economic and social priorities, I felt I had missed my chance to make a real tangible long term difference. Society was being redrawn from the ground up, and I was working in a windowless operations centre office two timezones from the riding I had grown up in and represented, a world of travel restrictions away from a Parliament in which I had worked for nearly a decade, unable to meaningfully participate when that participation would have been at its greatest value.

I had not dodged a bullet at all. To the contrary, I felt that I had missed my moment. But it is not necessary to be on the Hill to push for change.

This period was an opportunity not to complain about government overreach, but to look at the role of government holistically. It was the time that we had as a country to have meaningful, deep, longer term debates about topics like guaranteed minimum income, the long term viability of our health care system, our role in the wider world.

But we, collectively, missed our best shot. Throughout the western world, not only in Canada, we let this opportunity slip by us. We dealt with self-interested and uninformed protest, funded instability, and primarily sought to regain only normalcy and stability. We rushed to get the country back to the way it had been rather than the way it could be. We never explained how the restrictions and mandate had overwhelmingly succeeded in their stated objectives, the end of which had allowed people to doubt their purpose.

The festering resentment of the pandemic restrictions and the lack of meaningful social change since have allowed parties interested in further sowing those divisions to bring us ever closer to the hard-right turn observed in some of our closest allies.

The people were — are — clamouring for ambitious social change. They were met instead with things like return-to-office mandates that kept wealthy commercial real estate owners happy without addressing the lessons learned about an economy that could largely function from home.

This lack of ambition has brought us to a place where right wing demagogues are rising around the world. At least they are willing to change something, even if it is not the change the people are clamouring for, so they get the support of those unsatisfied with the pace and direction of the changes (not) brought about by a single global health calamity in a missed opportunity of historic proportions.

When we stop following the news, when we stop listening to what is happening, when we just try to live our own lives, we are all missing our moment. This is the time to demand radically ambitious progress, not the time to protect and defend a status quo that does not work for the vast majority of people. The fight is bigger than performative discussions around woke politics; it is about essential fundamental structural change.

Keeping our heads down and hoping we won’t be personally affected is what is allowing the most powerful country in the world to build concentration camps, start wars, make a mockery of international law, and further abuse the working class. It is what is allowing their Canadian ideological siblings to maintain and expand their foothold in Canada, waiting for a more charismatic leader to seal their deal for us, too.

When we stop following the news, when we stop paying attention to what is happening beyond the boundaries of our immediate lives, we cede our power, our influence, our aspirations to those with very different ideas of progress — and who gets to benefit.

Not much, it seems; there are no real remaining checks and balances.

He has replaced most of the senior military leadership in his country for people who will obey his orders. He has replaced the Judge Advocates General to remove legal objections to his whims. He has shown that he has little interest in court orders that oppose his objectives. He has demonstrated a complete disregard for Congress and both houses of the Republican-controlled Congress have in turn completely abdicated their own legal authority and constitutional obligation to restrain him.

When cornered, Trump goes to the next level of insanity. Every time it looks like there is a limit to his depravity and ruthlessness, he finds a way to prove that he will go still further.

The war he is waging against Iran, officially dubbed Operation Epic Fury in the US, and widely derided as Operation Epstein Distraction, is a testament to what he is willing to do. He says more Americans will die because that ‘usually happens’ in war. A few Americans have already died. Hundreds if not thousands of Iranians have already died.

Reports are that at least 14 countries are now directly involved in the conflict he launched to distract his country from extensive allegations of sexual assault and corruption, supported by religious nutcases who think it will bring about the apocalypse, the return of the Messiah, and the rapture saving every good Christian which they obviously delude themselves into thinking they might be.

In such an environment, who will stop him from pressing the big red button? If anything, those wishing for the end of the world in the interests of their own posthumous salvation are probably salivating at the chance for an excuse to launch the world into nuclear annihilation. They’re that selfish.

What could be more effective than using nuclear weapons to wipe out an alleged and unproven nuclear weapons program? Or to suppress an enemy intent on fighting back?

Just a couple of days ago, the American navy fired a torpedo at an Iranian navy frigate returning from a fleet week-type event in India to which the Americans had also been invited. A condition of attendance was that the vessels present could not be armed. The Americans knew this. They fired anyway, sinking the IRIS Dena and killing the majority of its crew. Shooting an adversary’s vessel sailing on a schedule with no ammunition in a war is cowardly, but it is a legitimate military target.

As the few survivors escaped the burning wreck, the American ship that fired the kill shot and the US navy in general refused to get involved in rescuing them in a gross violation of both the laws of the sea and the Second Geneva Convention.

It was the Sri Lankan navy that picked up the 32 survivors, while the Americans casually committed another round of war crimes. The shipwrecked are entitled to be saved. As with the blasting of fishing boats out of the Caribbean in the lead-up to the kidnapping of the president of Venezuela just a few months ago, the United States has little interest in following international law or conventions.

With the American military being willing to commit such acts without blinking, what is to say that any member of the American armed forces would refuse a nuclear launch related order?

Glass Empires By W. A. Lawrence

A Lunatic With a Nuke

Independent investigations continue because discerning readers choose to sustain them. Glass Empires remains accountable only to subscribers, not advertisers or political interests. This publication needs paid members to continue. Founding members stabilize long term independence and strengthen the reach of every future inquiry. Annual plans remain 40% …

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2 months ago · 78 likes · 4 comments · W. A. Lawrence

We only know of two circumstances where protocol called for the launch of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. In both cases, Soviet officers paused and said ‘no’ at a critical moment when their training said ‘yes.’

Vasily Arkhipov refused to agree with the captain and political officer aboard the Soviet B-59 submarine on October 27th, 1962, in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis, when the captain of believed war had broken out and ordered the launch of a tactical nuclear weapon against a pursuing American aircraft carrier. In Soviet protocol, three officers had to agree in that circumstance, and only two did. His refusal alone prevented nuclear war.

A little over 20 years later, and just a few weeks after an off-course Korean Air flight 007 had been shot down over the Soviet Union, the sun glinted off the horizon causing an alarm in a satellite-based Soviet ICBM monitoring station announcing the first-strike launch of several nuclear weapons by the US. Soviet officer Stanislav Petrov didn’t believe his instruments and delayed reporting it until he was sure, confirming that nuclear war was not in fact under way and preventing one from being incorrectly called in response.

The United States, unlike most nuclear powers, maintains a nuclear first-strike protocol. There is already a process by which the president, with nobody to second guess him, with no declaration of war, with no required justification, can issue a nuclear launch order as he sees fit. The failsafe in the system has always relied on the President being a rational empathetic human being aware of the consequences of his actions.

This is no longer the case.

Glass Empires By W. A. Lawrence

Christian Nationalists Spent Fifty Years Building This Holy War. They Miscalculated Three Things.

Join the paid subscribers who keep Glass Empires going. Annual memberships remain 40% below the monthly rate for a limited time…

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2 months ago · 105 likes · 10 comments · W. A. Lawrence

We know Trump is willing to test the limits of his power in every other category. We know he likes to use every tool physically available to him. We know he has been curious about American nuclear weapons since before he was inaugurated the first time. We know he has the power and authority to fire nuclear weapons whenever and however he sees fit. We know that the layers of experienced military commanders who would have the courage to refuse or at least push back against an illegal order have largely been purged. We know how Trump acts when backed into a corner. And we know that many of his advisors, including his own Crusaders Cross-tattooed secretary of defence, are apocalyptic religious extremists hoping to usher in the end of the world to bring about the rapture.

If he decides he wants to try, the only thing standing between the United States and nuclear war is the hope that there are enough Arkhipovs and Petrovs in the American armed forces able to refuse to turn the keys and press their launch buttons.

As unfathomable as it is that he is that evil of a human being, I cannot help the feeling that Trump is itching to be the first president since Truman to fire a nuclear weapon in anger. To his mind, that ‘beautiful’ act would make him truly the greatest president ever to have served in what’s left of the White House.

We stayed out of Vietnam. We stayed out of the second Gulf War in Iraq. We followed our obligations under NATO article 5 in Afghanistan. We have not been perfect in the shadow of American imperialism, but Canada has by and large tried to do the right thing when it comes to military intervention. It was not that long ago that we were known for our peacekeeping, the development of which earned Lester B. Pearson the Nobel Peace Prize before he was Prime Minister.

It’s puzzling, then, that Canada’s official position comes across as a mealy-mouthed toothless endorsement of the American-Israeli attack on Iran. While many have tried to justify the statement’s nuances, the bottom line is that Canada is now listed in the world consciousness as being on board with what we describe as “Iran-related hostilities throughout the Middle East” while avoiding the term “war.”

Charlie Angus / The Resistance

World At War: Canada Must Speak Up

On the first day of the Iran war, they bombed a school and murdered 165 children, seriously injuring 95 more. It wasn’t so very long ago that such a brazen war crime would have resulted in shock, horror and global condemnation. Not anymore…

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2 months ago · 52 likes · 17 comments · Charlie Angus / The Resistance

It was likely intended as a way of endorsing the purposes of the military campaign without endorsing the campaign itself, but in so doing irritated virtually everyone across the political spectrum. Those who believe we must strictly adhere to international law are offended that we would endorse an illegal operation. Those who believe we must help Iran rid itself of a dangerous and oppressive regime are offended that we are refusing to participate. While it is often said that you have made the right decision if everyone is equally mad, it is not especially clear here what decision we actually made.

It was only a month ago that our Prime Minister stood in Davos and addressed the global rupture and the need for middle powers to work together while the superpowers trample on nearly a century of developed international rules-based order. The notion that we could be endorsing this attack simply to avoid irritating Trump just a few weeks later is spurious.

The Prime Minister has access to intelligence that the vast majority of us cannot begin to imagine. His endorsement of the attack on its face was specifically an endorsement of a move to end Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. If the country truly were in a position to build and deliver nuclear weapons in the near term, it is something that he would likely know while the rest of us can only guess.

Marcel's Substack

Why Canada’s Position on Iran Isn’t About Liking the U.S. or Israel.

There’s a lot of anger floating around right now about Canada supporting the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon…

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2 months ago · 260 likes · 98 comments · Marcel Arsenault

The trouble is that, even if it were true, it is assumes that such information has anything whatsoever to do with the launching of this war.

When George W Bush launched his illegal attack against Iraq in 2003, he spent months building up a case that the country was developing weapons of mass destruction. He put Colin Powell, one of the most credible figures in his country, up to presenting information that ultimately proved to be completely false in order to justify the invasion. The invasion went forward, and it destroyed Powell’s reputation.

This time, there is no such effort. There is, however, a mid-term election taking place in the United States where the president is so deeply under water that, should the election be free and fair, the Democrats would likely win supermajorities in both houses.

Meanwhile, there have been major developments in the Epstein case implicating the president in some of the most disturbing possible behaviour that are bubbling to the surface.

Trump announced the attack against Iran at 2 AM US Eastern time on his personal social media network, Truth Social. He often posts at that hour. It could be a coincidence, but it is hard to miss that 2 AM Eastern Time is 10 AM Moscow time. His wildest posts often appear while the United States is asleep but after Russia’s leadership has had their morning coffee.

The morning of the attack, Ukraine announced that Russia has for the first time accepted the idea of American security guarantees at the negotiating table, previously a non-starter.

That Russia is not defending Iran in this war, when Iran has been a steadfast ally for Russia against Ukraine, is more than a little bit curious. The timing of all these elements is clearly suspect.

The Existentialist Republic

The Regime Just Entered Its Most Dangerous Phase

The United States is at war with Iran. A missile hit a school full of little girls and killed 165 of them. Three American service members are dead, and the president says there will likely be more. And while we process that, while every camera in the country points at the Middle East, ten other things are happening that would have each dominated a full …

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2 months ago · 91 likes · 9 comments · Christopher Armitage

United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated on Monday that the attack was intended to reduce American casualties from the retaliation from when Israel attacked Iran. It is clear that Benjamin Netanyahu’s nomination of Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize as part of his concerted, long-term efforts to groom Trump for his own ends, has been working, with Israel steering American foreign policy through careful ego management.

It is worth remembering an incident last year, before Trump started picking fights with countries all over the world, when Ukrainian president Zelensky visited the White House. In their joint media appearance, Zelensky observed that Ukraine could not hold an election because of the ongoing war. Trump visibly lit up to the notion and asked if that meant if the United States were at war, they also would not need elections.

Trump being offered a ready-made major war by Netanyahu that would be distracting enough to impact the viability of his domestic elections would seem to be too attractive of an opportunity to pass up.

Netanyahu has long wanted war with Iran and has been preparing Trump to carry it out for him over the past several months.

The Democracy Defender's Substack

Iran War: We Follow The Money (To Mar-A-Lago)

by The Democracy Defender…

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2 months ago · 4 likes · 2 comments · The Democracy Defender

Trump’s advisors, who largely hail from the Christian nationalist organisation the Heritage Foundation, did little to dissuade Trump. War in the middle east is known to serve their purposes as well.

Each has their own motivation. Trump simply wants to stay in power and thinks war will help. Netanyahu wants to dominate the middle east and stay out of jail. And the Christian right wants to bring about the rapture, which is the basis of their support of Israel and has been for a long time.

Jonathan Larsen’s Substack

U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for “Armageddon,” Return of Jesus

To support my reporting and keep it free for everyone, you can become a paid subscriber. Thank you…

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2 months ago · 1138 likes · 215 comments · Jonathan Larsen

There is no coherent narrative for launching this war, even among its instigating participants. Nor do they have any idea how to end it.

So why us? What does Canada get out of morally supporting US-Israeli offensive action in Iran? The United Kingdom, France, and most of the rest of our allies have not followed suit. Canada’s own government admitted that, in spite of our intelligence and military ties to the United States, we were not even informed of the war.

Prime Minister Carney is the master of nuance. He tried to explain our position while in India but it is still wide open to interpretation, some of which interprets it between the lines as quite positive.

Concis Canada

Carney Outsmarted Allies on Canada’s Iran Stance

Hours ago, open-source investigators reported that French Rafales are patrolling the skies over the UAE. The fighters appear to be operating out of Camp de la Paix — France’s permanent military base in the United Arab Emirates…

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2 months ago · 302 likes · 41 comments · Shankar Narayan

Ukraine is on board because Iran has been directly arming Russia, and it is in their interest to encourage any action that causes Iran to be taken out of that war. It is one of few countries supporting the offensive that has an arguably legitimate reason to do so. If Canada’s position were based on Ukraine’s situation, at least there might be an argument to be made for us as well. But alas this too has not been the case.

Unilaterally decapitating foreign governments is not exactly Canadian tradition, no matter how vile their regimes might be. If taking down foreign leaders who suppress protest and kill their citizens is in vogue, there are quite a few other candidates to choose from with some being closer to home.

It is up to our government to clarify what exactly it is we are supporting, and why.

The sooner the better.

The Bulwark

What Is the Point of This War?

A vignette from the end of the U.S.-led global order, per Reuters…

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2 months ago · 236 likes · 151 comments · William Kristol, Andrew Egger, and Benjamin Parker

The Conservatives, in having to protect their right flank from the full-on looney tunes People’s Party, are stuck embracing both Russia and disinformation. It is worth going back a decade for a moment to explore this.

In May of 2017, just a few months after Donald Trump was sworn into the presidency for the first time, Andrew Scheer beat Maxime Bernier for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada by a razor-thin margin of 50.95% to 49.05% in the 13th round of counting on the party’s preferential ballot — the same preferential ballot that the party opposes for the rest of us in federal elections.

Bernier won the first 12 rounds of that Conservative leadership race, with Scheer winning as the second-to-last choice of just enough supporters of the other 11 candidates to win in that final reallocated count. There is no escaping the fact that Maxime Bernier represents how a significant portion of that party saw itself at that time.

After losing, Bernier tried to split the Conservatives back into its pre-Harper constituent pieces by creating the People’s Party of Canada. As leader of his own party, he fully embraced the most extreme of right wing views, forcing the Conservative party ever-further to the right to counteract that division.

The People’s Party website today lists these platform highlights, nearly all of which raise red flags right in their framing:

• Immigration - Imposing a Moratorium & Deporting Illegals

• Gender Ideology - Protecting Women & Children from Harm

• Canadian Identity - Preserving Canadian Values & Culture

• Foreign Policy - Focusing on the Security & Prosperity of Canadians

• Global Warming & Environment - Rejecting Climate Alarmism

• Public Finance - Balancing the Budget and Then Cutting Taxes

• Housing - Cooling Down an Overheated Market

• Self Defence - Allowing Victims to Defend Themselves

The Media Ecosystem Observatory released a report this week entitled “Conspiratorial Claims and Institutional Distrust in Canada’s Online Ecosystem” exploring on-line disinformation and its sources and effects. Their study focused on 8 areas of on-line disinformation. They list them in the report as:

1. Health threats: Public health threats (e.g. COVID-19) are exaggerated to expand government control.

2. Gender indoctrination: Schools are indoctrinating kids with radical gender ideology.

3. Media-elite collusion: Major Canadian media outlets conspire with political elites to manipulate public opinion.

4. Election fraud: Vote counts are faked during elections in Canada.

5. Deep state: A secretive group of elites (‘Deep State’) holds most of the real power in Canada.

6. Digital ID: Digital IDs are used by the government to secretly control Canadians.

7. Intentional wildfires: Wildfires in Canada are intentionally started to advance the eco-agenda.

8. Climate hoax: Canada fakes environmental data to expand government control over Canadians.

The overlap between these high disinformation topics and the PPC platform highlights may not be comprehensive, but it is noteworthy, particularly on gender indoctrination and climate change. COVID is on the PPC complete platform as well, just not in the highlight reel. In all those cases, the PPC platform falls directly within the parameters of the studied disinformation, and it is not on the side of the evidence.

While they do not name the accounts, the study notes:

100 online users account for 68% of conspiratorial posts, capturing 90% of views and 86% of likes. The same users generally promote multiple conspiratorial claims, particularly about the deep state, election fraud, and media-elite collusion, and gain attention primarily by posting around high-profile events.

Keeping this all in mind, PPC leader Maxime Bernier wrote on Tuesday:

The West must understand that Ukraine has lost the war.

He doubled down Wednesday, reposting his own call last fall for Russia to keep the territory it has already conquered.

When trying to understand the Conservative Party and why they chose and re-chose Pierre Poilievre, remember that the adversary they are most concerned about is not Mark Carney or the Liberal Party, whose honeymoon they believe must eventually end, rather it is the right flank in the form of the People’s Party.

Built around disinformation, supporting Russia in their war against Ukraine and the West, Canada’s far right is threatening the uneasy coalition of Canada’s Conservatives. The long game for Poilievre is keeping that right wing coalition together, knowing that if the right is divided, winning will never again be possible.

In accepting that keeping the conservative movement together does not require facts, the promotion and exploitation of politically effective misinformation makes more sense. Conspiracy theories and disinformation are easier to sell than ideas and proposals. They are also harder for opponents to fight. It is difficult to argue facts with someone who believes patent falsehoods.

By embracing convoy politics, anti-vaccine rhetoric, immigration dogwhistles, climate change denial, and other extreme views in what we have come to nickname “Maple MAGA,” the Conservatives of Pierre Poilievre have succeeded in the most important part of their long game: Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party has yet to win a seat.

Why the far right in Canada and the United States is so willing to support Russia is related. The Russian propaganda machine uses disinformation to destabilise the West and has been doing so for at least a decade. This helps the far right, whose core message is that government is bad. The useful idiots have moved from being pro-Communist to pro-Putin.

For the unity of the right wing, disinformation is their fire, and the Russian money keeping it going is its fuel. Opposing Russia would be to bite the hand that feeds them.

It is also why, when the right needs to create a war of distraction, they choose a new war in the middle east over defending our ostensible allies in Ukraine.

In 2025:

Brazil sentenced Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years for plotting a coup after losing the 2022 presidential election.

France sentenced former president Nicolas Sarkozy to 5 years for corruption.

Peru sentenced two former presidents the same week, Pedro Castillo for attempting to disband Congress to hold on to power and Martin Vizcarra for corruption.

The Philippines arrested former president Rodrigo Duterte and extradited him to the Hague to face prosecution for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court.

South Korea sentenced Yoon Suk Yeol, their former president, to life in prison for attempting to invoke martial law to seize absolute power in a self-coup.

David Graham

Consequences Are Possible For Coups

In the year leading up to his bid for re-election, the president sought to sow doubt about the legitimacy of the voting machines and voting system throughout his country. Following his defeat, he planned a coup and his supporters attacked and ransacked the country’s national legislature. Now he is going to prison…

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7 months ago · 12 likes · David Graham

It is a positive sign that many countries are willing to prosecute former leaders, even if Canada and the United States are visibly reluctant to do the same.

As the Epstein files slowly trickle out, naming ever more people in what should be seen as the trifecta of the world’s most significant pedophile, sex-trafficking, and corruption scandals, we are seeing numerous countries opening official investigations, but precious few arrests or prosecutions. Where they exist, they are largely for the corruption rather than the exploitation exposed.

Earlier this month, Norway arrested Marius Borg Høiby on suspicion of rape. He is the son of the country’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit but it is the princess who has been under scrutiny for her appearances in the Epstein files.

King Charles’s brother Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest last week and Lord Mendelson’s arrest over the weekend would suggest that more is coming. A closer look, though, shows that the defrocked prince and the British Lord are charged with misconduct in public office for sending state secrets to Epstein. It is for crime against the state exposed in the Epstein files, not related to the allegations of child rape that have been floating around the prince for over a decade, nor the rape or human trafficking at the centre of the scandal.

President Bill Clinton was impeached by Congress for lying about whether or not he had an affair with a White House intern, while Donald Trump’s well-documented history of admitting to far more serious offences has garnered him the support of the same congressional caucus that voted to impeach Clinton. Sexual misconduct of any degree is not the offence, in the eyes of the Republicans, but to be ashamed of such misconduct is so egregious as to warrant impeachment.

Dean Blundell

BREAKING: Donald Trump’s Name Appears More Than ONE MILLION Times in the Unredacted Epstein files.

February, 10, 2026…

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3 months ago · 1741 likes · 58 comments · Dean Blundell

Trump should have been charged for fomenting a coup on January 6th, 2021. Coupled with estimates of over one million references to Trump in the unredacted Epstein files, there is likely more than enough evidence to charge him with more crimes than we can even begin to imagine.

The Department of Justice simply did not have the courage of their convictions to take down a former president, in spite of overwhelming and prosecutable evidence showing that he was an active and existential danger to their country and its democratic institutions.

While Americans have taken to calling their president TACO — Trump Always Chickens Out — it is consistently the justice system itself that has chickened out. That is how he has managed to stay in office, where he mocks the whole premise of the rule of law by affixing a banner with his image to the Department of Justice building in Washington, DC.

Trump getting away with these crimes amid so few arrests and prosecutions around the world is an authoritarian trend. Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu, like Trump, know that they cannot afford to lose office lest they face prosecution for their assortment of alleged crimes, so they remain by any means necessary. As long as they keep their status and roles, they will maintain their practical immunity.

Unprince Andrew had reason to believe his status, too, would keep him out of handcuffs. History is definitely on his side. One need only look back a decade to the release of the Panama Papers in April of 2016. That massive document leak revealed in spectacular and specific detail how the wealthy and powerful around the world move and hide their money, committing fraud, bypassing sanctions, and evading taxes.

In spite of overwhelming evidence in those files, few were charged, even fewer convicted. After that story petered out, the most significant outcome was the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese journalist who broke the story.

We must, then, return to Canada and the Airbus affair, where a former Prime Minister declared cash gifts while in office on his taxes many years after the fact, and at that only when the one who gave him those funds, Karlheinz Schreiber, was extradited to Germany on tax evasion charges.

He faced no consequences for his actions in spite of well-documented corruption, by journalists like Stevie Cameron, and even extracted over $2 million from the government in a defamation settlement when word got out that he was being investigated — after he received but before he declared the generous amount of cash he received in office.

It all suggests that Canada, as it stands, will not have the courage to address any crimes found in the Epstein files that could otherwise be prosecuted here.

While we could follow the examples of the United Kingdom, South Korea, the Philippines, Peru, France, Brazil, and possibly Norway, history would suggest that we are far more inclined to follow the American lead in (not) dealing with our Epstein class.

We can only hope that Canada’s own Department of Justice shows the spine needed to counter this history.

The US is preventing oil from reaching the country which depends on imports to power its electrical grid, its economy, and generally provide for its people. The American plan to steal Venezuelan oil is at the heart of the crisis, cutting off the island nation’s main supply.

The situation in Cuba is getting worse day by day. Schools are closed, public transit is shutting down, garbage collection is coming to a grinding halt, domestic food production is severely impacted. This attack on the Cuban people is completely unjustified and amounts to yet another war being waged by American dictator Donald Trump.

It is not clear what purpose continued sanctions serve. After 64 years of crushing the Cuban economy, Cuba has a slightly higher life expectancy than the US and the country and its régime have survived decades in spite of the outside pressure. But today, the country is at a breaking point.

PeaceQuest

Trump is crushing Cuba. Should Canada step up?

Cuba has been plunged into darkness. Schools, hospitals and essential services are hit by rolling 12-hour blackouts. Foreigners, including Canadians, have fled. Even worse, infant mortality is climbing…

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2 months ago · 1 like · 5 comments · Steve Staples

They have not done anything dramatically different to warrant the fresh tightening of an already-unjustified noose. Rather, it is part of Trump’s expansionist imperialism. He is intent on dominating the western hemisphere through his “Donroe doctrine,” and Cuba is just another unaligned country to bring to heel.

Our government put out an advisory recommending against all non-essential travel to Cuba months ago. All commercial flights between Canada and Cuba have already stopped. Canada’s government is acutely aware of the situation, monitoring it with the cold clinical calculation of a distant observer.

We all heard Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech in Davos earlier this year describing the rupture in the world order caused by the American descent into chaotic authoritarianism, the need for middle powers to work together, to keep us at the table rather than on the menu.

David Graham

A Treatise For A Treaty On A New World Order

There is opportunity in this chaos. France and Ukraine ran a sting on the United States that showed the Trump administration was leaking classified data to Russia. We know that NATO, NORAD, and any other military alliance with the United States is no longer worth the paper on which it is printed. That does not mean we are stuck…

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3 months ago · 12 likes · 1 comment · David Graham

With that clear-eyed understanding of the circumstances, we do not need to kowtow to American whims on the world stage, especially on issues such as Cuba where we have not been aligned with the United States since Pierre Trudeau visited the country in 1976.

We need to overtly recognise the injustice taking place, the public health risks, the wholesale shutdown of an entire country at the whim of a madman. It is up to Canada to do everything in our power to break the blockade and ensure that basic supplies, including oil, reach Cuban shores.

To let the Cuban people suffer at the hands of the Americans simply to avoid confrontation with a man who has already threatened us with annexation will accomplish nothing. All it will do is show our own vulnerability for when he turns the same aggressive attention toward us.

David Graham

Venezuela, Canada, and the Donroe Doctrine

Yesterday’s illegal and violent annexation of Venezuela should dispel any remaining notion that the United States is a functioning democratic country worthy of any form of respect on the world stage. This was Trump’s Czechoslovakia and Canada is precariously positioned as his Austria…

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4 months ago · 34 likes · 2 comments · David Graham

Helping Cuba survive this American attack is not pure selfless philanthropy, it is part of uniting the other states of America against the Donroe doctrine, the Trumpian worldview which seeks to subjugate every one of us. He has already attacked Venezuela, is collapsing Cuba, threatening Greenland, and openly discussing annexing Canada.

When Trump comes for us, we can only expect support if we remember the poem — and speak out for those for whom he is already coming.

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

-Pastor Martin Niemöller

I have made no secret of my disdain for Canada buying the F-35, even before Trump had retaken the American presidency. Going back at least 16 years, even the Auditor General warned that it was a terrible investment for Canada.

With Trump’s return, it becomes a security risk as well as an economic albatross. Relying on American support to keep our fighters airborne when the United States is the primary threat to Canada is, or at least should be, self-explanatory as a bad idea.

If a country is openly threatening to annex you, buying their weapons systems without taking ownership of the technology behind them is to hand them the keys to the front door. No matter how good the F-35 is, it is useless to us if it is not usable in combat.

Regardless of quality, the Americans want to force us to buy their toys. American Ambassador Pete Hoekstra told Canada in January that failing to buy the F-35 would render NORAD obsolete and cause American fighters to patrol Canadian airspace of their own accord. In other words: we either buy aircraft that take away our sovereignty, or we give up our sovereignty anyway. And some people still think these people are our allies.

When Carney came to office nearly a year ago, he put our committed purchase of the F-35 fighter jet up for review. Since then, the Swedish Saab J-39 Gripen has re-entered the race, with the company publicly pitching Canada on a 78-plane deal that includes 72 of the fast, small, cheap, and relatively easy to maintain fighters as well as six Global Eye early warning aircraft, as well as a host of economic and industrial benefits, and, critically domestic control of the technology we will be using.

Since that freeze, the whole country has weighed in on the debate over whether to stick to the 5th-generation American fighters or the so-called “4.5th-generation” Swedish aircraft.

Whether we still want them or not, Canada is getting at least 16 of the American jets, and news reports this week reveal that we’ve also paid fees for long-lead time parts for another 14. If we are going to have a mixed fleet, 16 is probably not enough aircraft to be a viable weapons platform for us. It is barely a single squadron. In that context, buying another 14 makes a small amount of sense, especially if we take into consideration the fighter plane’s “serviceability” rate.

That rate is, essentially, how much of the time the planes will be operationally ready versus in maintenance. For the F-35, the availability rate is, according to the United States’s own data, between 50 and 60%. The F-35A variant that Canada is set to acquire has the lowest overall availability rate of the three variants, at 40% by seven years of age, with full mission availability dropping to just 20% at the same age.

Boiled down, that means that if we receive delivery of 16 F-35A jets in 2027, by 2034 only three will be mission-ready at any given time with the other 13 in maintenance.

It is just enough to have a single plane on each of Canada’s ocean coastlines at any given time to defend our entire country. That’s not a combat aircraft, that’s a monument in a municipal park. If we have 30 aircraft in our fleet, at least those three aircraft will each get a wingman for their mission.

Debating Canadian Defence

Deconstructing the Defence Industrial Strategy

Canada’s Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS) is out. It outlines plans to boost the Canadian defence industrial base, spur innovation, and build new capability partnerships. The DIS is a solid, but measured, document —at least as compared with the Prime Minister’s rhetoric of late. Mr Carney has told us that we’re living through a rupture not a transition…

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2 months ago · 20 likes · 3 comments · Philippe Lagassé

So back to the Defence Industrial Strategy. As Philippe Lagassé’s excellent piece notes above, it is possible to read it more or less how you want to. There is enough vagueness in the overall document to leave our relationship with the United States in particular open to interpretation.

However, there is one section which lays out a series of specific targets and objectives that it is worth taking a closer look at. They address availability rates for different services under the heading “Achieving Results for Canada.” In that block of text is this critical line:

Raise maritime fleet serviceability to 75 per cent, land fleets to 80 per cent, and aerospace fleets to 85 per cent to meet training and operational readiness requirements;

The F-35 does not meet the 85 percent readiness requirement laid out in this plan. The American aircraft type does not even come close to that benchmark, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s report referred to earlier, where F-35As already have a 70% availability rate after their first year in service.

One cannot expect a small fleet of unreliable foreign-controlled aircraft to reasonably support basic defence requirements, much less the applied assertion of Canada’s sovereignty.

David Graham

It's Time For Canada To Get A Gripen

Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (MBS) visited the Trump White House last week and went home with a deal to buy American F-35 fighter jets. In Canada, we are reconsidering our plan to do the same, and with good reason…

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5 months ago · 34 likes · David Graham

The Saab J-39 Gripen, on the other hand, is a far more reliable aircraft. Against a requirement of 85% in the Defence Industrial Strategy, the Gripen has an availability rate of 85% as confirmed in Switzerland.

This is unlikely to be a coincidence, and is a strong indication that, through all the rumours, discussions, and debates, the federal government is laying the groundwork in this document to show how the Gripen is the obvious and essential choice to meet Canada’s actual requirements in protecting our economic and military sovereignty.