Positive reinforcement works as well! Gotta give blue states something good to entice fence sitters. For instance, you could annex Minnesota.
Sincerely
A Minnesotan
Take cascadia too please!
Extend Cascadia to the Mexican border lol
Wait, please. With all due respect, and if you wouldn’t mind:
If alphabetical order is at all a consideration, I think Massachusetts should go first.
Y’all have no respect for the Quebecois. First order of business should be their favorite vacation state, Vermont.
I like the sound of that. Join the upstairs party, let’s have a chill night while they argue downstairs.
New York is right here for the taking. Annex Niagra Falls!
Slowly I turned…
step by step…
inch by inch…
Gross. Niagara Falls NY is a shithole full of chemical toxins.
I would move to NY immediately.
MN has better labor protections
I prefer being further east. And warmer, the last time I was in MN it was in the winter, and something stupid like 15F for the highest temp the entire time (thats about -9.5C for folks who use sensible units). The last time I was in upstate NY in the winter, it at least went above freezing.
The beer is better in MN. But I also can’t drink beer anymore (thanks gluten, gfy) so not being forced to watch others enjoy is also a benefit.
I will gladly shovel snow to avoid 100F+ summers
I got some news for you. We get both.
Open invitations to provincehood should be extended to all states. Michigan specifically should be made aware that “it would be a shame if their nice auto plants exploded.”
Cascadia stands ready!
Maybe Annex Illinois too while you’re at it.
I’m calling it Trump’s inside-trade-war
Does he even commit insider trading anymore? Once you accept outright bribes, laundered bitcoin, and shakedowns of both corps and other countries, insider trading seems like the hard way of doing things
make them pay by constantly airing epstein related news, and investigation. this gets under trump skin quite often.
American here. I love my country.
But they should absolutely turn the screws.
Canada has always been a good friend to the US, both in peace and in wartime. When we had wildfires Canada sent us aircraft, crews, supplies. When we were at war in Iraq and Afghanistan Canada sent us some of the best sniper teams anywhere. Canada has always been a peacetime friend and trade partner and we exchange a lot of goods, services, and tourism in both directions.
And then we decide to fuck them over for no reason. We spent 3-4 decades offshoring every bit of American manufacturing and willingly, gleefully, built ourselves a giant trade imbalance because doing so increased shareholder value. Now we realize that might be a bad thing so what do we do? We fuck over our friends, one of the few countries that stood by us through thick and thin. Canada has done nothing to deserve this.
If I were a Canadian, I’d be right fucking pissed (politely of course) that our 100+ year friend is doing this. And quite frankly, I’d be right.
So yeah, while I want my country to succeed, in this instance we deserve to fail and we should fail. Canada deserves better than this.
They are too chicken shit to actually make a strong move though. They will bluster a lot a lot stopping these things but will cave as soon as someone says hey want to try again to talk about this?
Ford is a corrupt POS and Carney is about as predictable as every banker ever has been. We don’t have strong leadership willing to actually make a commitment to Canadians.
As as sad as depressing as that is, we are better off than the alternative that was Pierre Polievre
We don’t have strong leadership willing to actually make a commitment to Canadians.
As as sad as depressing as that is, we are better off than the alternative
Sounds just like American politics in most cases.
Sometimes we pick the ‘better off’ sometimes we don’t.
Sadly it’s trending more and more like that, America has always had that kind of effect on Canada so not a new thing but a culmination and acceleration of it
Sadly I don’t think it’s intentional. Our education is increasingly focused on tests over critical thinking- and somewhere along the line we decided it’s more harmful socially to hold an underperforming kid back than to put him in the next grade unprepared. We’re now having problems with college professors having to rework the course material to account for the fact that some students can’t read well if at all (I really wish I was kidding). Meanwhile our population too distracted trying to make ends meet, and so we are easy to exploit with extreme rhetoric. And our news is corporate focused on eyeballs over education so the problem gets worse.
I’m sorry that kind of culture is spreading :( I would strongly encourage you focus on maintaining your educational systems to a high standard.I love my country but I’m concerned it may literally be too late to save us and stop an Idiocracy-like future, especially with the onset of AI. I really hope it’s not. But I see my own colleagues basically offloading their own critical thinking to ChatGPT and I see how it makes them unable to think for themselves :\ And I worry a lot.
What you have going for you is that your state’s are much more individuals. By design. It well may be too late for your union, but individual states can still make good decisions if there’s the will of the people.
I won’t be surprised if at some point soon{2028 possibly…)that other nations no longer recognize the US as a whole and starts recognizing states as independent. Probably won’t happen I’m not holding my breath but it would make a lot of sense in a worst case scenario/pessimistic perspective
This is a good thing and a bad thing.
I’d agree that there may well be less unity between states. I believe that’s actually what our founders intended- individual states united, without local/state politics being an afterthought.
Problem is our system in concept is based on the idea that the only good source of authority for how to govern is the people who are governed taking an active interest in their own government. Sadly that kind of engaged population hasn’t been the case for a while. Sadly the ones who are pushing for this are more so our conservatives- not for any useful reason but because it gives them more ability to set discriminatory policies against gay people and enforce religion based socially conservative policy in primarily conservative states.IMHO the only thing that can save us is if the American people once again take active interest in the running of their government. This is easier said than done.
I’m inclined to agree, because some of the major consequences that should happen need to go through Alberta’s energy market and the bought and paid for traitor Danielle Smith, whom Carney still refuses to treat with anything other than kid gloves.
If I were a Canadian, I’d be right fucking pissed (politely of course) that our 100+ year friend is doing this. And quite frankly, I’d be right.
I genuinely hope we cease all trade with you entirely. You as a nation can no longer be trusted, no matter what happens over the next few years. The fact this happened in the first place is an inexcusable failure on the part of every American.
I don’t blame you.
You are correct that America is no longer a trustworthy reliable partner. And of that IMHO Trump is a symptom rather than a cause. The simple fact is that the American people have become disconnected from their own politics. So every 4ish years maybe half to 2/3 of the country opens one eyelid just enough to either blindly vote for whatever primary color they subscribe to, or to vote for whoever’s TV ads sucked less. The number that do real research is sadly very low.
The result is we flip flop back and forth between the red asshole and the blue asshole. Red seems to have more assholes the last couple decades but it varies when you look at the big picture. The real problem though isn’t red or blue is that the sense of national identity is gone. Go back 20 or 30 years and someone like Trump would be laughed off the stage in the first primary because rounding up immigrants with secret police squads is obviously not how America operates. Now people get so caught up in the ‘us vs them’ divisive narrative that they actually think the ends justify the means (or more likely, they just don’t research the reality of what’s going on and just say ‘yeah get rid of illegal immigrants!’)
The point though is that no set of policies, no matter how good or bad, can be assumed to last more than 4ish years. Look at Ukraine- Biden helped them out because defending freedom is what America stands for, Trump tried to shake them down for mineral rights then washed his hands of the problem.
So yeah, the fact that we as a nation are behaving this way is a failure. But the bigger failure is that we are so disconnected from the actions of our own government that we largely no longer care. We bitch about it online but ask anyone complaining online if they’ve done more than 1 hour of independent candidate research over the last decade? I’d be shocked if you get 1%.
Until that changes I’m sorry to say to anyone in the rest of the world, don’t assume any USA policy will last any longer than the administration that enacted it.
Personally if the situation was reversed, or if I was in charge of Canada, I’d just set a policy that each month, there will be a flat rate tariff on all US imported goods that will, over the next 30 days, be equal to the $ value of last month’s tariffs paid on all exports to USA. That money will be collected and made available to cover any tariffs USA charged on Canadian imports.
Result is the more USA tariffs Canadian goods coming south, the more tariff will need to be paid to sell stuff going north. And thus fewer people in Canada will buy USA goods because of the tariff, but people in USA will buy Canadian goods because the tariff is paid for by Canadian government.
Only works up to a point, but will definitely create a trade imbalance in Canada’s favor. And we can say you want it to go away, kill the tariff on your side and it’s automatically gone in 30 days.Our empire is collapsing.
Well said
Just goes to show Canada is the nicest place: despite all the bs we’re shoveling their way, they’re still acting as friends, trying to help us past our mental breakdown without harming the rest of us
We are not happy with you, we are being nice but we are not happy with you. Most of us want to burn your Whitehouse again like back in 1812.
Lots of damage has been done and I would say there is more coming from your orange mussolini.
The fact that there isn’t 100k people in front of the Whitehouse protesting daily at this point tells us your population doesn’t care about how your country is changing.
We would move away from you if we could because you have betrayed our good nature.
You cant absolve what has happened by pretending it hasn’t happened.
We will never be the “51st state” but maybe we will liberate you one day and you can become Canadian.
Most of us want to burn your Whitehouse again like back in 1812.
White house was burned down by the British army. We don’t need to burn it down, the next riot when Trump loses will do that.
I guess only time will tell but im not holding my breath on that.
At this point there should be masses of people protesting at the Whitehouse but obviously you guys are too busy playing the culture war thing to give a fuck about your democracy.
Canadians burnt down the Whitehouse even if they were “British” at the time.
I mean, I dont buy anything from the states anymore. Blue or red state, I dont care. I aint buying it. Sucks but its an economic war.
Also I dont want to get sick from your rotten-ass produce.
They’re the best friend we ever had and I like them a hell of a lot more than red states these days
The thing that really gets me is americans still believe they have something to offer Canadians. For heaven’s sake, america is now at 29 on the Transparency International ranking of Corrupt Countries. This list ranks countries on the basis of public bribery, misuse of public funds, abuse of public office for personal gain, nepotism in civil service, and state capture.
Think about that. The usa is more corrupt than the UAE. Why would anyone or any country want to drop to the level of the usa? There is nothing appealing about the usa anymore. The food is poison, the inequality is off the scale, the corruption allowing tech bros and billionaires to buy government, etc, etc, etc.
america has been sleep walking into the new slavery and cheer when they get beaten by another corrupt regime.
Edit addition. Lots of comments mention that the data is a couple of years old, and that more recent would show a much worse position. i suspect the comments are correct, but this is all that’s publicly available.
americans still believe they have something to offer Canadians
The US offers access to the US banking system, and protection of your maritime trade. It also does not like countries developing their own banking systems or overland trade routes (the hostility towards the Brazilian payment system is a recent example). This is something you’ll need to deal with (as in, build and defend an alternative, or join an existing system) if you want to become more independent.
Maybe I misunderstand, but can you explain what you mean about the banking system? Is it more for international transactions?
Canada has a banking system and our own payment system for consumer transactions called Interac. Canadian debit cards work differently than US ones, (or at least they used to). I worked at a tourist spot one summer and remember the US customers getting annoyed their cards didn’t work here. The transactions on the Canadian cards were real-time so overdraft wasn’t as much of a concern if you were using your card in a store. It would just get declined. Pre-authorized transactions and cheques are different, of course.
can you explain what you mean about the banking system? Is it more for international transactions?
It works on multiple levels:
- Your citizens having accounts in US banks.
- Your banks being dependent on US software.
- Your banks relying on a US backend for domestic (person to person or customer to business or business to business) transactions.
- Same as 3, but for international transactions.
- Your citizens, businesses and banks using the US dollar for international transactions.
Each of these is a little tax or subsidy you pay to the US. They also expose you to US sanctions. So the more of these you can do locally, the better. In practice, you want to completely avoid 2 and 3, and minimise 1, 4 and 5.
our own payment system for consumer transactions called Interac
Good. You need to make sure everyone uses it. Make it easy to set up, remove any usage fees (at least temporarily), and make it the default option offered by banks. You can also add features like payment apps and integration with public transport / ride-sharing services.
Thanks for the response but I wonder if maybe there is a misunderstanding.
Canadians generally don’t have American bank accounts. Businesses who do business in the states have them and I’m sure some individuals do but it’s often about how hard it is to do financial transactions in the US with via a Canadian bank. I was involved in an org that made one large payment to the US each year and they set up an account to do it because it wasn’t worth the hassle otherwise. The US has way more restrictions than one might expect lol.
When I was asking about international transactions I meant more like country to country or something, not individual consumers or businesses.
Good. You need to make sure everyone uses it.
This also makes me wonder if we are talking about different things. Interac isn’t optional. It’s the only way to use your bank account to pay for things via a card. It is run by the banks and has been around since the 80s.
As far as I understand the Canadian banking infrastructure is independent of the US or any other country. A lot of the software is custom or even developed in house. (I know a few people who worked or work for banks as developers.)
You can also add features like payment apps and integration with public transport / ride-sharing services.
Yeah, this all exists and has for a very long time. Canada was ahead of the states in terms of some of that stuff because we have way fewer banks and tighter regulations so it was easier. I remember visiting family in the 2000s and being shocked people wrote cheques. I don’t think I had seen someone pay with a cheque in a store before. 1
Yeah which is why I REALLY hope the Carney government is planning to put a stopper on the proposed sale of Moneris to US private equity. That idea was a disaster for Canadians BEFORE this current bullshit.
Before any of that, canada needs to build a proper oil pipe from Alberta to ontario that does not cross into the US. Thats a choke point for it right now.
Get em, hosers
Canada will always have an ally in the West Coast.
“The red states, we’re going to hit hard,” said Ford.
I mean, you can do it, and if the goal is to expend Canadian economic resources to get catharsis, or to score political points with fed-up Canadian voters, okay, but the deep red states aren’t going to turn blue, and what matters to the Republican Party is going to generally be control of political entities. Trump hasn’t generally adopted policies that are particularly fantastic for a lot of his rural, red-state supporters anyway.
The states that matter politically in terms of control of the federal Executive Branch (and the federal Senate) are purple. That’s where the US political parties stick their resources when they fight with each other, and if the aim is to alter US political outcomes via economic pressure—assuming that that is viable—that’s where pressure would have the largest effect.
For the House, sub-state-level electoral districts matter, and purple districts would matter, but the Democratic Party is likely to get control of the House in the upcoming midterms, in any event.
Affecting state legislature control, one would look for purple state-level districts. That would have limited direct effect on US foreign policy, though. It could have subtle, long-term effects, in that control of states can affect state-level policies that affect the federal House, gerrymandering of federal districts for the House, stuff like that. The impact is pretty indirect, though.
That was Ford. He doesn’t actually decide any of it, except, I guess, liquor sales in his province of Ontario. It may very well be campaigning on his part.
The actual strategy, per the federal minister, is to try and offset the lost business for industries effected by removing competing American imports, and to maintain the effort until Trump’s term ends (and further if necessary).
Targeting red states was the what we did last time, when it was less serious, and pressure from whatever donor or congressmen really mattered. Don’t worry, we watch the magic wall on CNN as well.
dear mr. poopy pants:
fuck off.
sorry. we’re canadian. let me rephrase that, eh?
kindly fuck off.
we’ll talk to the next guy or gal in charge.
from the great white north,
canadaWhat if we were to form CANZUK?
Commonwealth, minus some?
Who said that?
Doug Ford
as shitty as the guy is, at least he’s standing up to Trump
I just hope Ontarians don’t forget how he has and continues to fuck them over
at least he’s standing up to Trump
He’s doing nothing but blowing air.
For Americans who may not know, when Trump said:
“…primarily Governor Carney, and his Flunky, Ford…”
He was referring to Prime Minister Carney, not a governor, and the Ontario Provincial Premier Doug Ford. They aren’t even in the same party. Doug Ford is kind of a Canadian Trump Lite who keeps winning elections despite only getting 30-40% of the vote. He’s just very loud and I wish journalists would stop quoting him.
I can’t believe this even needs to be explained. But so many of them don’t bother to learn anything about us.
Ford is an absolute piece of shit, yeah. He’s a conservative who has absolutely gutted our healthcare, education, social services and countless other things. He’s also currently in a war against bikes and has been getting bike lanes ripped out all over the province.
I hate him with a passion but he has at least been very offensive in asserting our sovereignty which is nice even if it’s completely shallow and done purely for his own self interests. Marlaine on the other hand though…
I know he’s a conservative piece of shit but I will never get the bike thing. Usually his issues are all about capitalism and private ownership and bullshit like that.
I don’t think it’s possible to convey how much Ford hates Toronto. He’s so mad that the WASPs never accepted him even after he acquired wealth.
The bike thing goes back to his brother’s time as mayor and his time on City Council. A mayor can’t ban bike lanes (especially without council support) but the provincial government sure can. They did cancel transit projects tho!
Bikes became a symbol of leftists.
It wouldn’t be vintage Don Cherry if it didn’t cause a buzz. “I’m wearing pinko for for all the pinkos out there that ride bicycles and everything,” Mr. Cherry said in a speech he delivered at Rob Ford’s inauguration on Tuesday, donning a bright pink suit. His shots at the left did not go unnoticed, and may add new life to a word that has perhaps lost some of its bite in recent years.
Simpler times 😅
He called him governor to continue the threat of making Canada an American state. And boy is America in a state.
Jesus Christ. This is the most highschool trade war I’ve ever witnessed.
Imagine the cost of living being tied to a schoolyard fight. Add it to Trump’s list of treasons.
Ford has always been good at snappy one liners in the press. Trump Lite is right.
Carney can talk all he wants about balanced economic reciprocity, but you know Ford easily gets to the top of Trump’s media feed when he says shit like “then we’ll shut off the water and power!”
I know this is true and I hate it.
Yes, in normal times Carney and Ford would barely be on speaking terms. Ford is hardly Carney’s flunky. But, this is a case of opponents joining together to fight an even bigger enemy.
Traitor Danielle Smith from Alberta has been suspiciously quiet, since she is on the white houses payroll I expect her to break ranks pretty soon.
75% of Canadians supported Carney backing out of the trade deal. This is despite the fact that it will cause massive economic hardship to Canada to accept these tariffs.
Canadians are pissed, and are willing to accept economic hardship in order to stand up to a bully.
For decades Canada has just accepted whatever the US has demanded. For example, Canada has aligned its copyright laws to match US laws, which Hollywood was demanding. It has accepted that Canadians installing a Canadian-made app on their phones have to pay a 30% cut to an American company.
This was because the US, in exchange, was giving Canada free access to the American market. Canadian potash, lumber, energy, etc. could all be sold to the US without tariffs. Now Trump has reneged on that deal.
Carney has promised counter-tariffs, but I want to see a real trade war. Fuck the US copyright laws. Fuck the DMCA. Fuck American printers that won’t allow you to use your own ink. Fuck US tractors that can only be repaired by their US manufacturer. Canada should not only refuse to honour US intellectual property, I want Americans to travel to Canada to get their phones unlocked, to pay Canadians online for software to de-DRM their printers. What’s the downside? The US will counter with tariffs? Done that. The US will try to cut Canada’s access to Netflix off? We have bittorrent here.
Americans keep talking about this being a David vs Goliath fight, but for an ultra-religious country, they sure don’t seem to remember how that bible story ended.
Edited to add: In the early days of the USA it was a pirate nation, in many ways. There were Americans acting as privateers, basically pirates who were protected / supported by the US. The US also was infamous for ignoring copyrights on authors from Europe.
I don’t think it’s very likely that Canada is going to be brave enough to repeal the copyright laws that the US forced Canada into adopting. But, maybe, a 21st century “privateer” is possible. What if Carney walked over to the head of the RCMP and off the record put the word out that the RCMP was to stop cooperating with the FBI on any actions against Canadians accused of violating US IP laws. What if the government decriminalized laws against circumventing copyright protection.
For a long while before marijuana was legalized, it was decriminalized. It was pretty common to see people smoking pot on the street, which was technically illegal, and a cop would just walk by and ignore it. But, that was all done in an above-board way. I think it’s entirely possible something like that could be done through back channels with nothing written down.
Economic hardship is coming either way, the deal wasn’t fair and Trump would reneg either way. Good on Canadians for not trying appeasement.
The religious people here don’t actually read their book, they get told what to think.
In the early days of the USA it was a pirate nation, in many ways. There were Americans acting as privateers, basically pirates who were protected / supported by the US.
Oh, the year was 1778
How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now
A letter of marque came from the king
To the scummiest vessel I’ve ever seenGod damn them all, I was told
We’d cruise the seas for American gold
We’d fire no guns, shed no tears
Now I’m a broken man on a Halifax pier
The last of Barrett’s privateersYes!
Barrett, the Antelope and other elements of the song are fictional, but “Barrett’s Privateers” is full of authentic details of privateering during the American Revolution, which in Nova Scotia was dominated by privateer warfare.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett's_Privateers
At the outbreak of the American Revolution, many Nova Scotians were New England-born and were sympathetic to the American Patriots. This support slowly eroded over the first two years of the war as American privateers attacked Nova Scotian villages and shipping to try to interrupt Nova Scotian trade with the American Loyalists still in New England. During the war, American privateers captured 225 vessels either leaving or arriving at Nova Scotia ports.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_Scotia_in_the_American_Revolution
allowing our pharmaceutical companies to make any us drug ignoring patents/licenses would be pretty brutal.
And many Americans would love Canada if Canadians would sell them those drugs at costs far below what the American Pharma industry was charging.
That would be a great move, piss off the US pharma companies while getting on the good side of individual Americans.
if Canadians would sell them those drugs at costs far below what the American Pharma industry was charging.
The mail order pharmacies were charging Americans less than they would pay at home - and It caused a few shortages of some medications for Canadian patients.
Yeah, in a trade war there are casualties. Maybe the Canadian government could do more to increase supply to those privateer mail order “pharmacies”, or something.
