what is canada?

the answer is that canada is the part of british north america that wanted to stay in the british empire. it's not an "artificially drawn line", it's a line that was drawn by canadians and defended with our lives. canadians were on the other side of the american revolution; in fact, the country was largely unpopulated before 1776 (there were francophones and natives, but the population density was extremely low), and was populated primarily by british loyalists fleeing from the american revolution, and moving further back behind british lines that could be better defended.

one of the major things that the united states was founded over was the concept of property rights. to this day, there is really no clearly discernible concept of property rights in canadian law.

nowadays, canadians aren't likely to pick up their muskets to fight off americans that want to assert what many canadians think is the depraved and stupid concept of property rights, but we do like our health care system and we don't like gun ownership very much.

there are similarities, and i wonder if trudeau didn't say something stupid to trump when he went to florida that has generated this mess, but we are not americans and we have dramatic cultural differences that are not going to get smoothed over very easily. america should not push us too far. it might not like the result.

we are very much to the united states as the scots are to the brits.

america may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom.

mr. trump,

if you really think it's a good idea that canada join the united states, which i do not, why don't we have a vote on it?

that would seem obvious to most presidents.

it's somewhat worrisome that it apparently never crossed your mind.

it looks like both canada and the united states are going into recession in the next year. the truth is that we're already there.

i previously argued that the government of canada's sole focus should be on stopping that from happening. there are certain positions we need to take in response to trump - we need to stop a surge of migrants moving into canada from the united states and put pressure on the americans to police their own borders, we should be pressuring the americans to stop the flow of weapons into canada and we should be putting a complete freeze on military spending until they lift these threats - but that's about asserting sovereignty in the face of a clear threat to it, that's not going to stop the recession generated by these tariffs. 

a trade war is not in our collective interests. we don't have to do that. tariffs are, in fact, generally considered an act of war. why would we buy military equipment from a country that just declared war on us? that's not rational, and these tariffs are not a rational tactic to extract concessions from an ally. if the americans are going to act irrationally, we should take that irrational behaviour to it's logical conclusion. this is an act of war, and let's treat it like one.

something the government could do is go into a war economy and try to absorb the costs via running debt rather than via punitive tariffs. we'd then try to collect that via action at the wto, in the end. that would save us from going into a recession.

however, as i'm dealing with housing issues and continue to be irritated by the cost of rent, i need to ask: would i benefit from a lengthy recession? the truth is i would, if i can hold off here for a while longer and it drives the cost of rent down. in windsor, the economy is highly dependent on the auto industry. if we see layoffs, the rent will come down. a lot. and potentially quite fast. tariffs may create inflation in goods, but they should also drive down rent, and we actually really all need that right now, as the rentier class has made out like bandits in canada over the last ten years and it's by design, not accident. 

what class is trudeau in? the rentier class.

the last round was a phony war, but we're about to go into a real conflict and it's certainly going to hurt. 

maybe i should be quiet and step back and wait it out.