Canada Announces Divorce from America

https://charlotteclymer.substack.com/p/canada-announces-divorce-from-america

by mooreds • 6 months ago

156 80 6 months ago

charlotteclymer.substack.com

throwpoaster9• 6 months ago

I weep for my country (Canada).

This is a large, obvious, mistake.

pnexk• 6 months ago

This is a large, obvious, mistake.

It seems quite rational a response to the decisions taken by a larger neighboring nation’s state unexpectedly increasing hostility.

throwpoaster9• 6 months ago

Responding to hostility with hostility is emotional, not rational.

The geographic reality is that Canada derives substantial, permanent trade and defence advantages from our position as neighbours. Realignment towards China and Europe for emotional reasons squanders those advantages.

saghm• 6 months ago

Can you elaborate for those of us who aren't as familiar with Canada what the obvious nature of this mistake is?

eschulz• 6 months ago

I'm not from Canada, but my take is that given Canada's economic reliance on the US, any "divorce" would cost them more than anything they could find anywhere else. However, I also don't think the PM there can simply separate his country from the US by simply giving a speech, although he can work to foster closer ties with others while still trying to make it work with the US.

throwpoaster9• 6 months ago

We are beside America geographically. It is impossible to replace our market, defence, and cultural integration with America by cobbling together a trade bridge between China and Europe.

TwoNineA• 6 months ago

So you are happy that our "friend" decided on a whim to wanting to invade our other friend? Despite all of us being part of the same friend group? Despite canadian and danish blood being spilled in Afghanistan right after our "friend" decided to call article 5?

Fuck off.

andsoitis4• 6 months ago

Do you think it is a mistake because you disagree with Carney’s reasoning? Or do you think it is a mistake because of the risk it opens? Or do you think it is a mistake for some other reason?

hudon3• 6 months ago

As Canada is separating from the US, it is growing closer with China. This makes Canada a threat to the US. This makes the US a threat to Canada. This makes the US more likely to grab Canada's arm and pull it back in its circle by force. Canada just did a model of how long it could last against a US invasion and the answer was that its defenses would last 2-5 days.

It's all unnecessary and will just cause pain to end up where it started.

throwpoaster9• 6 months ago

I think Carney is an intelligent, well spoken, well educated, diligent, competent person.

Because of its geography, Canada reaps huge benefits from proximity to and friendship with America. That cannot be replaced by China and Europe.

I think Carney is pursuing a strategy based on economic models that have diverged from reality in important ways.

If you read his recent WEF speech critically these contradictory ideas are readily apparent. He surfaces some of those tensions in the text but does not end up resolving them.

lifetimerubyist• 6 months ago

Speak for yourself. I've haven't felt this proud to be Canadian in a long time.

(voted for Poilievre btw).

throwpoaster9• 6 months ago

Thanks for your vote and keep voting Conservative. Jamil is who we should have talking to the Americans.

bryanlarsen3• 6 months ago

Round one 12 months ago was a mistake. Elbows up when everybody else caved and went elbows down was a mistake.

Carney learned the right lesson, though. As Europe has learned, elbows down is also a mistake. The right approach is elbows up as a unified response.

conorcleary2• 6 months ago

The only mirage of 'elbows down' I've seen is pen to paper, elbows on desks. Action through words.

b3lvedere• 6 months ago

"Trump has pissed off one of the nicest countries on earth—our northern neighbors, who have faithfully stood by us in times of great calamity and never wronged us—so much that their leader told the world today that enough is enough and the United States and other superpowers should understand what has been done cannot be undone."

Fact is Trumps leadership keeps causing great trouble and bullshit on a global scale. At the cost of lots of lives and freedom of human beings. History is on repeat once again.

norome2• 6 months ago

[flagged]

falcor84• 6 months ago

Every single group of people that has been around for long enough accumulates things that they should be ashamed of. But everything is relative, and compared to other countries, Canada and Canadians have always seemed to me to be much better than the world average.

diego_moita2• 6 months ago

Every country in the planet has skeletons in their closet.

Some of them, however, acknowledge it, accept and try to do their best to overcome it. Others don't.

Some examples: most Germans know and acknowledge the atrocities of Nazism; very few Japanese know of the Nanjing massacre. And how many Dutch know about the atrocities of the East Indian Company in Indonesia? How many Belgians know about the genocide in Congo? How many Portuguese know about the tragedy of the Atlantic Slave trade?

Canadians know about the cruelty against First Nations in their history and acknowledge it, few Americans do it. In parts of Latin America (e.g. Brazil), those atrocities keep happening even today. And no, we don't "supporting everything the US have done". From Vietnam to Iraq, we have lots of disagreements with American foreign policy.

This country is shaped by the escape of the loyalists, the war of 1812 and the 49th parallel. We are not Americans.

pcmaffey• 6 months ago

Everywhere has its south.

dangus• 6 months ago

I don’t know if history is on repeat, but it rhymes.

Trump is a traitor to the United States. Society’s biggest failure was its inability to take off the sanewashing kid gloves and put him on trial for the big boy crimes he committed before it was too late.

He was caught on recorded phone calls committing election fraud.

He was caught stealing classified documents and refusing to give them back.

He was caught planning an insurrection and a coup. Even speaking of ending free elections should be illegal and shouldn’t be considered part of 1st amendment protected speech.

Republicans in congress have the power to end this today with articles of impeachment but are accomplices in the traitorous destruction of America.

He’s even a convicted felon and still got elected.

This version of democracy where corporations optimize the system for people voting against their own interests is not working. At this point it’s not even working for the corporations, who will find it much harder to make the green line go up without the stability of the past 70 years.

The only people left making a profit will be the mafia extraction economy Trump goons if we let this continue, just like the way it works in Russia.

stanski2• 6 months ago

Putin is a traitor to Russia but there he is still, 25 years on with no end in sight. The public is too easy to manipulate.

swaits• 6 months ago

Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, gave a magnificently powerful speech before the gathered elites that will be discussed many years from now. Decades, likely.

Extremely unlikely.

Davos is 95% elite echo chamber, virtue signaling, and complete bullshit, with only a rare 5% historical exception where the gathering actually resulted in binding, real-world consequences.

Anyone that thinks this speech will have any lasting impact is delusional.

peterspath• 6 months ago

It is like they play in a reality tv show. We are being entertained... or at least if they did funny shit. Maybe it is best to just ignore it?

JohnFen3• 6 months ago

I don't think that the message Carney delivered was primarily intended for the Davos crowd. I think it was intended for the world.

philipallstar• 6 months ago

But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.

He's right - sanctions on Russia for Ukraine is the most prominent example of this.

pavlov• 6 months ago

The difference is that previously these economic levers were used as sanctions against bad actors like Russia, whereas now under Trumpism they're used on a whim against allies and everybody else.

piva003• 6 months ago

What would you suggest should have been done with Russia about the invasion of Ukraine?

tharmas6• 6 months ago

Don't encroach NATO on their doorstep. Bring Russia into NATO.

USA strategy has been to keep Russia and Germany separated. They fear that combo as a potential rival superpower.

The division of Europe from Russia is exactly what the Americans want.

drooopy• 6 months ago

Sanctions on Russia due to the war in Ukraine (and other bad actors) and whatever the hell orange mussolini is doing are not even remotely close to being a similar situation.

vacuity3• 6 months ago

Rather, Russia attacked Ukraine as a great power oppressing a smaller power, and had every opportunity to cease, with or without international intervention. No one attacked Russia first.

vacuity3• 6 months ago

Someone had to take the plunge. Regardless of the other political considerations at present and whatever future events will happen, I respect Carney's initiative. I also appreciate the reference to Havel's essay; to me, its insight always felt obvious but also difficult to apply. But framed in this way, I understand. For some time, I've felt that the United States has been the leading example of a country that is powerful through narrative. Narratives are naturally idealized, but at some point the gap becomes too large to tolerate.

tweakimp• 6 months ago

And right in this moment Trump is talking about how Canada should be grateful for all the American freebies :D

mindslight• 6 months ago

Classic sour entitled old person behavior, thinking the crumbs they're deigning to offer are praiseworthy gold as they beg for human attention. It's unfortunate that we can't just not pick up the phone, as all the other sour entitled people voted to have this fool run our country into the ground.

Kuyawa2• 6 months ago

"If we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu"

Venezuela was an appetizer, Iran is next, Greenland the salad, but we all know China is the main course

stanski2• 6 months ago

A couple of tiny steps between the likes of Venezuela and Greenland and China though, eh?

andsoitis4• 6 months ago

Where's the dessert?

Kuyawa2• 6 months ago

Russia of course

keernan• 6 months ago

As an American, I've never been more proud of Canada.

_DeadFred_• 6 months ago

Remember when the right was freaking out that 'they' wanted to combine the USA, Canada, and Mexico into a mega country? Seems like the right would support this?

mcc1ane• 6 months ago

https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/speeches/2026/01/20/principled-...

Canada Announces Divorce from America

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