jean chretien called for export taxes in his speech to liberals on sunday night. like i said before,

chretien is this weird yoda character that speaks broken english and is somehow always right about everything, despite coming off as not very bright.

if there's a keeper of the canadian swamp, it remains mr. chretien. none shall pass.

if this is the policy being written up - export taxes on potash, aluminum, oil, electricity - trump had better back off before he gets hurt.

think of it like this: instead of having our workers build commodities to export to the united states, let's have them focus on building housing for current and future canadians to live in, in a massive make work project, like we haven't seen since the 70s.

this is what our government would do if it was actually socialist. it will probably not do any of this, it will make us pay more for oranges instead, which is stupid and pointless.

i'm actually surprised that ford slapped the tax on electricity, but hey. i'll take it.

it would be reasonable to put a 50% export tax on oil exports until the american president stops the flow of illegal guns into canada. they're killing us; gangsters and thugs.

we also need to get really tough on the amount of firearms entering canada from the united states.

this is unacceptable and needs to stop. now.

let's understand what trump did.

ontario put a 25% tax on electricity going to the us, in response to the tax that trump placed on his own people to buy canadian goods. trump's taxes are not targeted, and make no sense. he's not trying to protect industries. he's not trying to help businesses. he's just trying to dissuade american consumers from buying canadian products, broadly. it's not intended to help america in a specific way, it's intended to hurt canada in a broad way. it's the economic equivalent of a terrorist randomly shooting rounds into a crowded shopping mall, which is a fitting analogy for an american president.

what canada is saying is "if you want to tax your people to buy our products, we're also going to tax your people to buy our products, but we're going to tax the items that you have to buy from us, because you don't have any choice, and we're going to use it to mitigate the job losses resulting from your attempts to hollow out our industries".

in response, trump increased the taxes on his own people even higher.

well, we should increase our taxes on them even higher, too, then - but ensure those taxes are targeted on goods that they can't find an alternate supplier for. 

in fact, the feds should slap a 50% export tax on aluminum, too. 

they have nowhere else to get it. they'll have to pay it.

take the money generated from the export taxes and use it to build subsidized housing and more hydro plants, with labour supplied by construction workers laid off in the steel mills.

i want to clarify that canadian governments should mostly choose materials that are purchased by businesses to put export taxes on. the idea is to transfer the costs to american companies, because that is what trump is doing, he's targeting canada's corporate sector for hostile takeover.

some steel workers may benefit from retraining. we have a housing crisis - tell them to become construction workers. i mean, it's the most obvious keynesian make work plan in the world sitting in front of us - take the laid off workers and tell them to build houses. in terms of sterile, by the book economic metrics that nobody actually cares about, boosting housing makes everything look better on paper.

steel is a gross, dirty industry, anyways. i would rather offshore steel production. let the americans ruin their lakes.

that's fine. the export tax will mitigate it. that's the point.

an export tax on nickel would also work, as the americans get almost all of their nickel from us.

trump has no idea what he's doing. he legitimately thinks canadians pay the tariffs.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/11/trump-raises-canadian-steel-aluminum-tariffs-to-50percent-in-retaliation-for-ontario-energy-duties.html

if i was a conservative voter, and i was asked to pick between pierre polievre and mark carney, that would be a no brainer; i would pick carney in a second. polievre would be roundly defeated if carney were to primary him in the conservative party.

however, i'm not a conservative, i'm a socialist on the far left of the liberal party, and my ballot choice - which does not consider polievre, but is between carney, singh and may - makes me rather unenthusiastic about voting for the liberals. 

i'm going to suggest that you're going to see a lot of volatility in the polls, as the right abandons the goof polievre for the far more acceptable carney and the left finds itself in a crisis point, as it clearly doesn't want to vote for singh, for good reasons. he's a religious nut, and not in line with the left's tendency to embrace secularism, which is a longstanding issue with the ndp, which has always had this very undesirable religious streak that has sent secular leftists to the liberals instead.

a few months ago, this looked like a yawny election where little would change. i know the liberals were polling badly, but i didn't take that seriously. now, it looks like the conservatives might find themselves cockblocked by the liberals, who may just end up teetering to another minority, as they cave to the greens. 

i could only vote green or not at all at this point.

the outcome may not look much different in terms of seat counts, but it would be an upending of the political spectrum that is long overdue. the conservatives keep electing goofs and running them for prime minister, and conservative voters have long been looking for some escape mechanism. they don't have another harper to save them from the goofery, apparently. carney is exactly what they want. conversely, left-liberals have become increasingly frustrated and alienated by trudeau and the switch to carney - at 86% of the vote, apparently, according to the liberal politburo - may indicate they've given up and moved on.