the media and the liberal party are advancing this kind of groupthink that puts this vague idea of "canada first" without defining what that means.

what does it mean?

the truth is it doesn't mean anything, it's just typical empty platitudes from trudeau and his cronies. it means trudeau first. it means the liberal party apparatchiks first. 

that language needs to be rejected; we need to be putting canadians first, not canada first and there's a tremendous difference in those two statements. think what your country can do for you, not what you can do for your country. individual people are important; collectives, countries, governments and parties are not important.

the policies that the state will advance to purportedly help the country will devastate the people that live in it. these policies might help some abstraction of the investor class outside the country, but they won't help the people that live in it. this has been the problem with so-called free trade from the start; it prioritizes an investor class while devastating actual people. retaliatory tariffs are just more of that.

our mindset should be to try to avoid a fight as long as possible, not to eagerly (and stupidly) run head first into a sumo match.

danielle smith is actually right; there are ways to push back without retaliating, and retaliating should be a last resort, not a first resort. the state is not acting to preserve itself. there are people involved, and retaliation is going to harm those people more than it helps them.

it may become necessary, but it should be seen as a requirement that is arrived at with extreme caution, and not as some kind of saving of face or as a way to advance an ego in a scrap or something. we lose, by definition, if we retaliate.

the canadian government may also want to stop for a second and think through what it's doing, which is providing the americans with a pretext to invade, exactly when they're talking about it. would the united states seize a hydro factory if we shut it down? well?

let's see exactly what they do, but we should have social assistance ready first and retaliation ready second. it's probably not the smart approach.

does mark carney have any policy ideas to put forward that would help canadians - people. humans - avoid the brunt of tariffs without poking the elephant?