Canadian PoliGAF - 42nd Parliament: Sunny Ways in Trudeaupia

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Azzanadra said:
This reminds me, why does the right have a much easier time uniting than the left?
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I don't think they do. It may feel that way, but I think that's a bias of recent history (ie, the Harper years). In the Chrétien years, it was the right that couldn't get its shit together, and the Reform/PC merger ultimately carved off a piece of the old PC base that the new Conservative Party never got back (outside of 2011).

Parliamentary systems, even with FPTP, are inclined to have more than two parties. The centre-left is a much bigger portion of the electorate than the right in Canada, so I think it makes sense that we'd have more than one.
 
Considering the significant emissions from this project I'm not really sure how the Liberals are planning to meet their climate targets, which they've already revised downward to match Harpers. Maybe given that there's a global glut of LNG, they're hoping the project is now uneconomical and it'll never be built.

Considering that Premier Clark badly wanted any sort of LNG project to go ahead one has to wonder what may have been traded to get this done. Maybe we'll see BC government opposition to Trans Mountain fade away once the Liberals approve that project.
 
Azzanadra said:
This reminds me, why does the right have a much easier time uniting than the left?
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Well, that depends what you mean by "unite". If we're talking about the parties working together towards a common goal, we've had minority governments where the NDP and Liberal parties have worked together, perhaps most notably with Pierre Elliot Trudeau's minority government in the 70s (which is likely due in some part to having established relationships with many NDP members during the 60s and 70s and Trudeau's own political beliefs not being too far off from those shared by the NDP). If we're talking about voting a left-leaning party into power due to the vote being split by the parties, that has more to do with the FPTP voting system favoring strategic voting which doesn't reflect the general population more than it does on the left not being able to share their toys.

That being said, I do feel that people in this thread are overlooking how nasty the Canadian right's campaigns have been in the past. Remember the time they attacked Chretien's facial paralysis? No, the Reform Party, CPC, Wildrose, etc. are not as vile as America's right can be but that's a pretty low bar to pass when you have Donald Drumpf belittling black people and asking them what they have to lose while claiming he's not racist because he didn't feel guilty over a lawsuit involving his refusal to let African Americans rent apartments on any property he owned.
 
CazTGG said:
Remember the time they attacked Chretien's facial paralysis?
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As an aside, the general consensus is that that implication was accidental -- see, e.g., Lawrence Martin's biography Iron Man: The Defiant Reign of Jean Chretien, where his takeaway was that Allan Gregg and other senior PC campaign staff did not intend for the ads to be directed at his facial paralysis, but that "they should have known that it would be interpreted that way", and thus were incompetent.
 
TheRealTalker said:
that makes sense

hopefully by Trudeau 2nd term we actually accomplished some things that can buffer ourselves against people voting for the CPC
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A fracterted right with no power sounds pleasing


maybe then we can have election were the main parties are actually focusing on real issues instead of fearmongering
gutter_trash said:
the comments section in the Globe & Mail about the US election is insanely weird, overwhelmingly pro-Trump on a Canadian paper website

There is a darkside in the underbelly of the 30% to 35% base of Canada that has moved closer and closer to the US styled current Republican Party

this was unheard of during the 1980s, making Mulroney look like a Social-Democrat.

I agree that the next Canadian Federal Election will be ugly.

political discourse will get worse
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that could be true... seeing as they likely will blame their failures on more and more negative assumptions that everyone else is wrong

or they can be Putin paid trolls roaming the internet
 
TheRealTalker said:
A fracterted right with no power sounds pleasing


maybe then we can have election were the main parties are actually focusing on real issues instead of fearmongering


that could be true... seeing as they likely will blame their failures on more and more negative assumptions that everyone else is wrong

or they can be Putin paid trolls roaming the internet
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At least Harper was clearly anti-Putin, and I hope that most Canadian parties remain anti-Putin

the Alt-Right hijacking the Republican Party (who used to be big league anti-Soviets from Ike to W) now got taken over by Trump and the Oligarchs

the weird shit is that the Alt-Left (Jill Stein's Greens) is also pro-Russia, loves RT, and are Russia apoligists
 
gutter_trash said:
At least Harper was clearly anti-Putin, and I hope that most Canadian parties remain anti-Putin

the Alt-Right hijacking the Republican Party (who used to be big league anti-Soviets from Ike to W) now got taken over by Trump and the Oligarchs

the weird shit is that the Alt-Left (Jill Stein's Greens) is also pro-Russia, loves RT, and are Russia apoligists
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The "enemy (Russia) of my enemy (WEST/EU/USA/NATO/"NWO"/Globalists/Imperialists/Reptilians/etc.) is my friend" phenomenon.
 
Sean C said:
Parliamentary systems, even with FPTP, are inclined to have more than two parties. The centre-left is a much bigger portion of the electorate than the right in Canada, so I think it makes sense that we'd have more than one.
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I would say rather that all inclusive political systems (ie. not specifically parliaments) are inclined to more than two choices, since it's always impossible to bind multiple binary (or more) axes into a single binary axis.

Systems that divide one winner-take-all battle into many smaller winner-take-all battles (including FPTP and single-winner runoffs) are what apply pressure towards shoving all that diversity into a single binary axis. Systems like the US president are particularly binary because the outcome is singular on both levels: individual electoral college seats and many states are winner take all, and the whole contest results in the election of a single person even with a plurality outcome.

The pressure that allows Canada to escape this tendency towards binary choice is almost certainly a rather extreme regionalism. All successful third parties in modern Canada (since the Liberal/PC axis was established) have arisen out of regional pressures, afaik. Socred from western religious right, NDP/CCF from western socialism during the depression/dustbowl, Reform from prairie soft nationalism, Bloc from Quebec hard nationalism, and the Green party from BC environmentalist concerns. The US hasn't had that kind of regional pressure since the civil war, probably largely because it was recognized as something that nearly ripped the country apart so it's heavily discouraged from becoming a formal thing (even though obviously there is an implicit south/north and coastal/middle divide still).

But on the second half of this, I agree absolutely. Much of the difficulty here is our tendency to frame our own politic in US terms, so we talk about two centres: the one that floats to the left and right of the Liberals, more or less, that identifies a Canadian centre, and the American one that floats to the left and right of the Conservatives. So we see two parties to the left of the American centre, but really what we have is one party on the left, one on the right, and one that lives in the mushy middle ground.
 
gutter_trash said:
At least Harper was clearly anti-Putin, and I hope that most Canadian parties remain anti-Putin

the Alt-Right hijacking the Republican Party (who used to be big league anti-Soviets from Ike to W) now got taken over by Trump and the Oligarchs

the weird shit is that the Alt-Left (Jill Stein's Greens) is also pro-Russia, loves RT, and are Russia apoligists
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But do you remember reading the comment sections of Ukraine articles in 2014? They were all strangely pro-Russia/pro-Putin, but from the left-wing or at least anti-Harper side.
 
You Are Viewtiful said:
But do you remember reading the comment sections of Ukraine articles in 2014? They were all strangely pro-Russia/pro-Putin, but from the left-wing or at least anti-Harper side.
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I'm pretty sure that in 2014, the websites of the CBC and the Globe and Mail were on the list of targets by the troll factory. You'd click on the name of a user and you could see that they were posting comments all day long on any story mentioning Russia. Right now, only the useful idiots remain active.
 
Pedrito said:
I'm pretty sure that in 2014, the websites of the CBC and the Globe and Mail were on the list of targets by the troll factory. You'd click on the name of a user and you could see that they were posting comments all day long on any story mentioning Russia. Right now, only the useful idiots remain active.
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they still are. the comments section is just toxic. don't get me started on CBC's youtube comment section. the brigading is just comical.
 
I've listened about certain issues from aboriginal classmates/friends as well through social media. Right now a big one is the state of tap water in many aboriginal communities and this has gotten me thinking about how money is carried out on reserves.

on one side I'd like to give aboriginal communties as much autonomy as possible on their reserves as it is the least us as canadian citizens should allow. As someone who is half Kurdish I can sympathize with a marginalized group seeking semi autonomy.

on the other hand I find the money allocated to these reserves has the capacity to be mismanaged if not stolen (going to the recent story on the man stealing what was it 600k in funds meant for the community?) by the chiefs or other leaders. From there I see the horrible living conditions this can or has caused. I see many persons put the blame on the provincial and federal Gov't but I'd like to look at the internal politics/economy for each tribe. For instance Ive gathered this source on chieftan income http://www.discoveryfinance.com/annual-chief-salary-for-first-nations.html

So what say you guys on how to handle the poor tap water conditions of the first nation communities? should more oversight by the gov't be forced into these communties or should their internal politics be left to them? I find this is going to become a much larger issue soon as the Trudeau government I can see will be losing aboriginal support here in BC because of his support for the LNG pipeline
 
cryptosporidium said:
I've listened about certain issues from aboriginal classmates/friends as well through social media. Right now a big one is the state of tap water in many aboriginal communities and this has gotten me thinking about how money is carried out on reserves.

on one side I'd like to give aboriginal communties as much autonomy as possible on their reserves as it is the least us as canadian citizens should allow. As someone who is half Kurdish I can sympathize with a marginalized group seeking semi autonomy.

on the other hand I find the money allocated to these reserves has the capacity to be mismanaged if not stolen (going to the recent story on the man stealing what was it 600k in funds meant for the community?) by the chiefs or other leaders. From there I see the horrible living conditions this can or has caused. I see many persons put the blame on the provincial and federal Gov't but I'd like to look at the internal politics/economy for each tribe. For instance Ive gathered this source on chieftan income http://www.discoveryfinance.com/annual-chief-salary-for-first-nations.html

So what say you guys on how to handle the poor tap water conditions of the first nation communities? should more oversight by the gov't be forced into these communties or should their internal politics be left to them? I find this is going to become a much larger issue soon as the Trudeau government I can see will be losing aboriginal support here in BC because of his support for the LNG pipeline
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I'm personally of the opinion that the should be able to govern themselves, but at the same time they should be required to be held beholden to the same standards we expect of our own Municipal, Provincial and Federal laws. That means no "special rules" that only effect aboriginal reserves, they have to have the same level of transparency as our other levels of government.

From that point onward, we hold the chieftains accountable as we would hold any politician accountable. If one is corrupt to the communities detrement, try them by court of law... of course this also means developing tools that would allow those living in reserves to easily blow the whistle without fear of being caught and scrutinized.
 
I've read some articles by FN authors who state that they find accountability laws culturally insensitive, in the sense that apparently within at least their communities it was considered insulting to be asked to disclose a lot of this stuff as they considered it a suggestion they were acting improperly.

I try to accommodate other viewpoints, but this really seems like something that shouldn't be negotiable. Hell, we didn't used to have disclosure laws either for much the same reasons -- a gentleman's honour, and all that.
 
I know that one band was going to have their well moved by the government for free if the band agreed to have fluoride in the water and that a lot of people were opposed to that.
 
How would Trump fare in Canada?

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Remind me again how the Québecois are a bunch of racists white men? ;)
 
AuthenticM said:
Remind me again how the Québecois are a bunch of racists white men? ;)
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Morrigan Stark said:
Nice. I should post that as a response to every "they're so racist" Québec-bashing post, haha. (And lol @ Alberta, surprising exactly no one...)
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AuthenticM said:
Yup, of course Alberta is the highest. They are both the Texas and Florida of our country.
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Cym4u8y.png
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Maybe don't throw stones in glass houses. I mean, it's not like someone just did a poll that asked directly about a racist dogwhistle or anything. Nope, let's correlate a second order thing directly to racism instead and then be dicks about it. National unity is a beautiful thing, ain't it?
 
maharg said:
Maybe don't throw stones in glass houses. I mean, it's not like someone just did a poll that asked directly about a racist dogwhistle or anything. Nope, let's correlate a second order thing directly to racism instead and then be dicks about it. National unity is a beautiful thing, ain't it?
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I think voting for Trump is a much clearer indicator of racist tendencies than wanting immigrants to integrate to our society.
 
AuthenticM said:
I think voting for Trump is a much clearer indicator of racist tendencies than wanting immigrants to integrate to our society.
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Seriously. Dog whistling or not, those questions are vague. "Do more" as in, learn French/English to be more functional in our society, or do more as in, "stop wearing funny hats because I'm uncomfortable with people who are different"? Big big difference. And then there's the whole build-a-wall-ban-entire-group-from-entering-country thing with regards to Trump... :P
 
Morrigan Stark said:
Seriously. Dog whistling or not, those questions are vague. "Do more" as in, learn French/English to be more functional in our society, or do more as in, "stop wearing funny hats because I'm uncomfortable with people who are different"? Big big difference. And then there's the whole build-a-wall-ban-entire-group-from-entering-country thing with regards to Trump... :P
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Then there also the fact on maharg's graph, you can't directly compare Québec's percentages to the other provinces', because Québec is a mainly French province, so there's the whole language protection thing that is not an issue in the rest of Canada (or the Americas, for that matter), so of course Québec would house more people who would "wish that immigrants would integrate better".

And as I said, wanting immigrants to integrate better is not only a worse indicator of racist tendencies than being willing to vote for Trump, but I'd say it's not an indicator of racist tendencies at all.

edit: To add to your nuance of what does a person mean by "wanting immigrants to better integrate to our society", I think that someone who is racist wouldn't say "I wish these immigrants would integrate better", he's say "These immigrants should go back to their fucking country" (which is a common refrain amongst racists). So, again, saying "immigrants should do more to integrate to our society" is just not an indicator of racist tendencies at all. You have to look elsewhere to find these.
 
Morrigan Stark said:
Seriously. Dog whistling or not, those questions are vague. "Do more" as in, learn French/English to be more functional in our society, or do more as in, "stop wearing funny hats because I'm uncomfortable with people who are different"? Big big difference. And then there's the whole build-a-wall-ban-entire-group-from-entering-country thing with regards to Trump... :P
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AuthenticM said:
I think voting for Trump is a much clearer indicator of racist tendencies than wanting immigrants to integrate to our society.
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AuthenticM said:
Then there also the fact on maharg's graph, you can't directly compare Québec's percentages to the other provinces', because Québec is a mainly French province, so there's the whole language protection thing that is not an issue in the rest of Canada (or the Americas, for that matter), so of course Québec would house more people who would "wish that immigrants would integrate better".

And as I said, wanting immigrants to integrate better is not only a worse indicator of racist tendencies than being willing to vote for Trump, but I'd say it's not an indicator of racist tendencies at all.

edit: To add to your nuance of what does a person mean by "wanting immigrants to better integrate to our society", I think that someone who is racist wouldn't say "I wish these immigrants would integrate better", he's say "These immigrants should go back to their fucking country" (which is a common refrain amongst racists). So, again, saying "immigrants should do more to integrate to our society" is just not an indicator of racist tendencies at all. You have to look elsewhere to find these.
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Right. Nuance only applies to the people we like, not the ones we don't. Obviously Alberta is all full of racists and Quebec full of saints who just want to protect their language. Yup yup yup. Keep patting yourself on the back there. To put into concrete terms your fallacy here, you're trying to turn "All Trump voters are racist" (which, for all practical purposes I'd basically agree with) into "all racists like Trump." That's the only way you can say "Trump Alberta < Trump Quebec = Quebec Less Racist" without substantially more information. Please just own up that you took an easy opportunity to bash people you don't like (and in a thread that is nominally inclusive of people you bashed) and move on. You want to be an asshole to Albertans in some Quebec/Ontario-only thread or something go for it, but here I'm gonna call you out on it.

Also LOL at outright saying this isn't a dogwhistle. Keep believing that yo.
 
You're right that I went with the cheap shot re: Alberta, though I didn't say "lol Albertans are so racist", I just said it's "surprising no one" that it's the highest. It was still a cheap shot for comedy, I'll own to that and I apologize, but never once did I say that most Albertans are racist and that there's no racism in Québec so please don't twist it like that.

Keep in mind the context here in which AuthM posted, which is essentially a solid counter-argument to the incredibly common Québec-bashing you find everywhere. With this context in mind, I completely agree with him that supporting Trump makes you a hell of a lot more obviously racist than a vague, open, unqualified question like "do you think immigrants could do more to integrate".
 
Morrigan Stark said:
You're right that I went with the cheap shot re: Alberta, though I didn't say "lol Albertans are so racist", I just said it's "surprising no one" that it's the highest. It was still a cheap shot for comedy, I'll own to that and I apologize, but never once did I say that most Albertans are racist and that there's no racism in Québec so please don't twist it like that.
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Thank you. I accept your apology, and I'm also willing to admit I may have gone a bit overboard in response, but please recognize that Alberta bashing is also something very common, and frankly, extremely common in this specific thread. I'mu all for you guys defending yourself vigorously against people bashing Quebec, but not if you're throwing other people under the bus to do it.

Keep in mind the context here in which AuthM posted, which is essentially a solid counter-argument to the incredibly common Québec-bashing you find everywhere. With this context in mind, I completely agree with him that supporting Trump makes you a hell of a lot more obviously racist than a vague, open, unqualified question like "do you think immigrants could do more to integrate".
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The thing is that even agreeing that there are other reasons to agree that "immigrants should integrate", a ceiling of 76% leaves a lot of room for a lot more racists than 26% of people who like Trump. And the point stands that you can't infer any kind of *ranking* from this, because there are plenty of racist people who would still never say they like Trump, and it's not hard to imagine why a culture gap like the one between Quebec and the ROC, let alone the US, would give them other reasons. It's an overreach plain and simple.

To be clear, the same would also be true if someone said the poll about integration means Quebecers are "more racist," and I wasn't saying that. The integration poll is, to me, a black eye on this entire country and we all share our part in it. I was pointing out that if you're gonna start inferring things like that about other people you'd better be prepared to hear it back. Hence, glass houses.
 
It's true, I took a cheap shot on Alberta with my comments "of course they are the highest" and "they are the Texas and Florida of our country". I apologize if it hurt you.

maharg said:
Right. Nuance only applies to the people we like, not the ones we don't. Obviously Alberta is all full of racists and Quebec full of saints who just want to protect their language. Yup yup yup. Keep patting yourself on the back there.
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I never said or implied either though.

maharg said:
The thing is that even agreeing that there are other reasons to agree that "immigrants should integrate", a ceiling of 76% leaves a lot of room for a lot more racists than 26% of people who like Trump. And the point stands that you can't infer any kind of *ranking* from this, because there are plenty of racist people who would still never say they like Trump, and it's not hard to imagine why a culture gap like the one between Quebec and the ROC, let alone the US, would give them other reasons. It's an overreach plain and simple.
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It's true that 76% for that question "leaves more room" for racists than 26% of people who would vote for Trump. But I do believe that voting for Trump is a much clearer indicator of racist tendencies than the former. If I were to make up additional percentages taken out of my ass, I'd say that of the people figured in the 26%, between 90 and 100% of them should be racists, as opposed to maybe 20% at most of the 76% of people in Québec who wish immigrants would do more at integration. That last question probably served as a dog whistle for some, but not the majority. I understand that it's easy for people outside of Québec to see racism where there isn't because of cultural and historical differences, but believe me when I say it's true that a good deal of that perceived racism is actually cultural protectionism, something that isn't really an issue in the ROC or the US. So the "could do more at integration" was probably dog whistling for a much bigger pool of people in the provinces other than Québec.

Anyways

fuck Trump
 
Trump supporters in Canada are racist or either harbor prejudices.

I had the unfortunate experience of losing a dumb "friend" (Italian-Canadian in Montreal) who peddled his notion of Catholic nationalism into White Nationalism which is fucked up. Using a religion to further his racist views against minorities

He used religion to peddle his skewed political beliefs in a psycho manor. Jesus would not approve my dumb friend.

shit broke lose when I defended Black Lives Matter while he peddled All Lives Matter memes. To make a long story short, he doesn't want to speak to me anymore... LOL.

so yeah, Trump supporters in Canada are the worst of the worst segment of Conservative supporters.

I don't believe that all Conservative supporters are racist in Canada. Nope. But there is a chunk that are. Those who support Trump in Canada are
 
I don't know, Trump supporters could also just be selfish Canadians.

I live in the US temporarily right now, so I don't want Trump, but before then I'm not sure. Sometimes the bad choice in the US ends up being good for us. Obama was a fantastic president (well in comparison to past US presidents) for the US, but George Bush was much better for Canadians then Obama was, as odd of a statement as that is.

Consider that the actions of the Bush administration helped create a global financial situation that allowed Canada's economy to be at one of it's highest moments. Trump is more likely to create that then Clinton, especially with him trying to fight globalization in today's global economy. As he pulls back on trade deals, that opens up competition (aka us) to facilitate that trade.

Clinton has some very hawkish foreign policies which could create more conflict in the middle east, and potentially other areas. Most of what is occurring in the middle east is due to the US, whether intentional or not, and whether noble or not, it's due to them. Arming rebel groups in Syria as a good example. Trump is an isolationist. He'll be too focused on making domestic policies that benefit his corporations.
 
Macleans has their new PM rankings out!

Long-term PMs:
CANADAS-BEST-PMS_LONGEST-SERVING.jpg
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Short-term PMs:
CANADAS-BEST-PMS_SHORT-TERM.jpg
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Six of the top seven are Liberals; five of the bottom six are Conservatives. That sounds mostly right, though I'd have bumped St. Laurent down a few spots, and Mulroney up one or two places. I also think Mackenzie and Diefenbaker both deserve to be above Harper.

I just don't understand how Mackenzie King can be ranked at #1. Reading a lot of the comments, it seems like most of the academics are placing electoral durability above all else, which is insane. Pearson arguably did more in less than five years than Mackenzie King did over the course of 20+ years as PM.

Tabris said:
I don't know, Trump supporters could also just be selfish Canadians.

I live in the US temporarily right now, so I don't want Trump, but before then I'm not sure. Sometimes the bad choice in the US ends up being good for us. Obama was a fantastic president (well in comparison to past US presidents) for the US, but George Bush was much better for Canadians then Obama was, as odd of a statement as that is.

Consider that the actions of the Bush administration helped create a global financial situation that allowed Canada's economy to be at one of it's highest moments. Trump is more likely to create that then Clinton, especially with him trying to fight globalization in today's global economy. As he pulls back on trade deals, that opens up competition (aka us) to facilitate that trade.

Clinton has some very hawkish foreign policies which could create more conflict in the middle east, and potentially other areas. Most of what is occurring in the middle east is due to the US, whether intentional or not, and whether noble or not, it's due to them. Arming rebel groups in Syria as a good example. Trump is an isolationist. He'll be too focused on making domestic policies that benefit his corporations.
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This is complete and utter nonsense. If Trump were to be elected and pull back on trade deals, that would devastate Canada. 70% of our exports go to the U.S., and we get 60% of our imports from there. That's facilitated by NAFTA, which presumably would be the trade deal he'd try to pull back on. There's no way increasing trade with the rest of the world could possibly make that up. I know it's fun to think in counterfactuals, but: no, a Trump win would probably be even worse for Canada than it would be for any other country in the world.
 
matthewwhatever said:
This is complete and utter nonsense. If Trump were to be elected and pull back on trade deals, that would devastate Canada. 70% of our exports go to the U.S., and we get 60% of our imports from there. That's facilitated by NAFTA, which presumably would be the trade deal he'd try to pull back on. There's no way increasing trade with the rest of the world could possibly make that up. I know it's fun to think in counterfactuals, but: no, a Trump win would probably be even worse for Canada than it would be for any other country in the world.
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You are just focusing on NAFTA. If the US pulls out of trade with China and EU, that's a huge opportunity for us to come in to facilitate. Also they may need to rely on trade with us more if they are pulling out of that other trade. Personally I'm of the opinion that we need to diversify our trade more among other nations.

Also do you agree or disagree that Bush was better economically for us then Obama was, even though he was a horrible president and Obama was significantly better?
 
Tabris said:
You are just focusing on NAFTA. If the US pulls out of trade with China and EU, that's a huge opportunity for us to come in to facilitate. Also they may need to rely on trade with us more if they are pulling out of that other trade. Personally I'm of the opinion that we need to diversify our trade more among other nations.

Also do you agree or disagree that Bush was better economically for us then Obama was, even though he was a horrible president and Obama was significantly better?
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I'll agree to that because it's the truth. The problem, at least this election cycle, is that what might be good for our economy might not necessarily be good overall. Having trump as the president and him having control of the most important job that affects not just the US but the world would be worse than the US having a Republican president that might make our economy a bit better.
 
Tabris said:
You are just focusing on NAFTA. If the US pulls out of trade with China and EU, that's a huge opportunity for us to come in to facilitate. Also they may need to rely on trade with us more if they are pulling out of that other trade. Personally I'm of the opinion that we need to diversify our trade more among other nations.

Also do you agree or disagree that Bush was better economically for us then Obama was, even though he was a horrible president and Obama was significantly better?
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Yes I'm mainly focusing on NAFTA, because, again: 70% of our exports, 60% of our imports. I'm also all for diversifying our trade relationships, but there's no way we could make up that gap. Our #2 trading partner is either China or the E.U. (depending on whether you want to talk single countries or trading blocs); in either case, the amount of trade we do with those countries is literally a fraction of what we do with the U.S., plus we don't have free trade agreements with either of them (since who knows if CETA will ever actually be ratified).

As for the idea of Canada as a facilitator...I don't see how we'd have this magic insight into dealing with Trump that others wouldn't.

RE: Obama vs Bush...what exactly did Bush do for Canada that was so great? He oversaw his own country being driven into the ditch, which didn't exactly help us. By contrast, Obama implemented two agreements with Canada (Beyond the Border and the Regulatory Cooperation Council) that helped fast-track cross-border movement of goods and people, and he did that even though he and Harper barely got along. If you're going to make a statement like "Bush was good for Canada's economy", you're going to have to back it up with more than just a reassertion.
 
Tabris said:
You are just focusing on NAFTA. If the US pulls out of trade with China and EU, that's a huge opportunity for us to come in to facilitate.
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It would be a bigger boon for countries near them. There's a reason our trade is so strong with the US, we're right beside it
 
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