[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[crazy canuck]

An exceptional opinion piece by Coyne describing the seismic changes that are happening in Canada in response to the rupture of our relationship with the Americans.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/519974dc5e28f762a87fb14c1570523f4fb873adfcfcb945043907ccc3c41650/T7A6YW5DZJAIZPIDNJKYOJVX3U/

This is a gifted link, and I recommend reading the whole thing, but here are paragraphs summarizing the everything everywhere all at once changes that are occurring.

At one go, we are attempting to redirect some of our trade to other nations besides the U.S., including by a series of sweeping free trade agreements, while raising our defence spending to levels, whether in proportion to our GDP or to total government spending, not seen since the early 1960s.

At the same time, we are embarked upon a massive infrastructure spree, again of a kind not seen in decades: pipelines and electricity links and railways and more. Rather less has been done as yet on the productivity or internal trade barriers fronts, but these will surely have to follow – there is no way we will be able to pay for all this other spending if we don't.

And we are beginning to be taken seriously again in international councils. Mark Carney's personal reputation, as a former central banker and international financier, is only part of this. The reason his speech at Davos, calling on middle powers to get out from under the "hegemons'" thumbs, landed with such enormous impact was not just who said it, or where, or when – at the height of the Greenland fiasco – but that it was a Prime Minister of Canada, of all places, saying it.


This wasn't Canada preaching from the sidelines. This was a politician with skin in the game, leading a country that was more dependent on one particular hegemon than any of the others represented there – and therefore more at risk. As a consequence, we are taking an outsized role in the construction of a post-American world.

[viper37]

Thanks, interesting read.  Interesting history lesson, I did not know about the Conservative of Dieffenbaker vs the Liberals of Pearson.

[Grey Fox]

Thanks for the article, CC.

I post this before reading it.