Jivani's success would be win for Canada. Why can't Liberals admit it? - "Industry Minister Mélanie Joly made comments about Conservative MP Jamil Jivani’s trip to Washington, D.C., which revealed her lack of understanding of successful negotiations. Her comments also reflected a troubling inflexibility towards Canada-United States relations in general. In a recent video post on X, Jivani said that he was going to the White House because he wants to “help Prime Minister Mark Carney be successful in negotiating a trade deal with the United States.” Making the trip as a Conservative MP might sound counter-intuitive, he acknowledged, but argued, “The reality is that this is … so important to the Canadian economy, and to our future as an independent, self-reliant nation, that Conservatives and Liberals don’t need to fight over this at all. In fact, we need to work together.” Jivani pointed out that “our economy is perpetually in a state of uncertainty” until these matters are resolved, and expressed concern about a recent deal to allow more Chinese electric vehicles to be sold in Canada, when the Canadian auto industry is already in crisis. In an interview on Thursday, Joly was asked by with CTV’s Vassy Kapelos whether, given that Jivani said he was meeting with representatives from General Motors, if he had asked her for a briefing, or if she had offered him one before his trip. With an attitude that appeared to border on revulsion, Joly shook her head dismissively and replied: “No. I think it’s because I actually called him on it, saying that as MP in charge of Oshawa constituents that are working at GM, that are losing their jobs, why is he just embracing the Trump administration that is putting tariffs on them?… Why is he basically not denouncing the U.S. auto tariffs?” Kapleos then asked, “He says he can be of help to the government by going there. Do you think that’s possible?” Joly replied, “You know, I’m not in his heart nor in his mind. I’m just looking at what he says and what are the facts. And until I actually said on television that he was not talking and denouncing the GM layoffs, he didn’t talk about it. And now, he’s talking about it. So I think, you know, basically, it talks for itself.” Joly’s response is troubling, because of what it reveals about what’s required for successful trade negotiations with the United States. Jivani has a friendship with U.S. Vice-President J.D. Vance. Even a partisan cabinet minister should want to leverage such a relationship if it benefits Canadians. This is why Kapelos’ question probably stung a bit. Joly should have seen this as a novel strategy that might bear fruit, and offered him insights and support. Luckily, Jivani was given a briefing by Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic Leblanc. Yet Joly wasn’t the only Liberal who didn’t see the value in mining Jivani’s relationship with Vance for the betterment of Canadians. Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters that the Liberals already have extensive contacts in the White House, but that Jivani was nonetheless given a briefing. Carney, seemingly mocking Jivani’s involvement, said, “I don’t believe (he) is the trade critic for the opposition, certainly not the minister of international trade, nor the prime minister.” Why should any of that matter if Jivani’s visit produces any positive results? There’s also no evidence that Jivani’s constituents have been demanding that he denounce the tariffs, nor that he is only discussing them now because Joly called him out. In fact, Jivani expressed concern about the tariffs before they were even implemented... The Liberals, on the other hand, flat out dismissed concerns about our border and fentanyl at the time, with then-prime minister Justin Trudeau saying, “Our border is secure, and less than one per cent of the illegal fentanyl entering the United States comes from Canada.” Despite Trudeau’s dismissive comment, the Liberals did go ahead and appoint a fentanyl czar, implemented new border security measures, listed cartels as terrorist entities and set up a joint task force to address transnational organized crime, fentanyl trafficking and money laundering. When Operation Blizzard, a result of these requested border measures, was carried out during a month-long period in 2025, it intercepted 1.44 kilograms of fentanyl that would have crossed into the United States. Perhaps our border wasn’t as secure as we thought it was. While 1.44 kilograms may sound like nothing, it’s enough to kill 720,000 people, suggesting the Liberals should not have dismissed the concern so easily. Given that the Liberals have not walked back their claim that our borders are secure, this might be a good place to start repairing the relationship. The biggest problem that Joly’s comments reveal is in her suggestion that anything that isn’t “denouncing” is automatically “embracing.” Mature politicians understand that politics is theatre, not the revelation of one’s true feelings. They understand that they can be against something but still conduct themselves in a diplomatic manner in public. This is how you make friends and influence people, and it is especially necessary in politics. Who knows how relations with the United States would have gone if we had a party in power that understood that Canada needs to pay its fair share for defence and co-operate on border-security issues. There’s a non-zero chance that embracing and compromising with our long-standing ally and closest neighbour would have been a much better strategy than the knee-jerk pearl clutching and anti-American rhetoric chosen by the Liberals."
Damn conservatives are traitors and always trying to undermine the country for partisan advantage. Time to jail all of them!
John Hughes | Facebook - "For those of you who are outraged because Jamil Jivani, the Yale educated lawyer/ Canadian MP/ friend to the US Vice President has gone to D.C. in an attempt to improve our situation, I have this to say. While you’re banging on that he’s “not qualified” to do so, let me remind you that your former Prime Minister was a part time drama teacher & Snow Board instructor. You voted him into the PMO three times! I might also add that this has a great deal to do with the situation we find ourselves in today. Nevertheless, suddenly, QUALIFACTIONS MATTER! Wait…what about all your virtue signaling in support of DEI? What about all the virtue signalling for “Team Canada?” Has your TDS progressed to the point where you’d rather see our country go off a cliff before you’d accept a helping hand? After all, economists are now reporting that Canada’s economy is on life support & in recession watch. What harm could Mr. Jivani’s visit to Washington possibly cause? I’ll go out on a limb & say likely none. If it turns out that i’m wrong, so be it. I’ll admit it. Besides, if Mr. Jivani returns with nothing more than a White House drink coaster in his luggage, it will be better than anything we’ve seen thus far. Thank you for not giving any attention to this matter. 😝"
Jamie Sarkonak: Canada chose its Olympic decline - "You could dismiss it as a matter of chance, but it tracks with the rest of this country’s decline. We’ve been getting poorer, sadder and less healthy, among other things, and many of our leaders now frown upon excellence and the building of national pride as worthy objectives in any field. Now consider that sports funding has stagnated for the past two decades. It’s no wonder that athletic performance is getting noticeably worse... In 2026, the Canadian Olympic Committee says that the $220 million sports organization ecosystem needs an additional $144 million to function properly — a point that was hammered home as the Milan games wrapped up. This is modest compared to the ever-growing list of multi-million vanity programs that tax dollars end up being wasted on, at home and even abroad. The Sport Support Program has also felt the blight of politics in recent years: among multisport organizations applying for funding, those “which are mandated to provide a specific service or which deliver services to a specific underrepresented group” are given priority, and support for “underrepresented groups” is an evaluation criterion. “Groups generally considered to be underrepresented include women, people with disabilities, Indigenous Peoples, members of Two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, plus (2SLGBTQI+) communities and racialized groups,” notes the application guidelines. Diversity was a priority in the 2019 Canadian High Performance Sport Strategy, as well as the 2024-2028 strategic plan of Own The Podium, a non-profit geared at helping Canada win more medals. And just last year, the Canadian Olympic Committee came up with a diversity, equity and inclusion plan (DEI) that discloses a $1 million DEI “investment” in Canadian sport organizations, as well as the creation of numerous initiatives to support “equity-deserving communities” in sports — from funding to marketing efforts."
Everyone knows DEI improves performance, so Canada needs to double down on it
John Ʌ Konrad V on X - "NATO is in far bigger danger than anyone realizes. And the reason has nothing to do with defense budgets. The real danger is psychological. It’s cultural. Europeans didn’t just free-ride on American security for 80 years. They built an entire identity around the idea that they evolved past the Americans protecting them. That identity is now the single biggest obstacle to Western survival. And the darkest irony is: we helped build it. After World War II, Europe wasn’t just economically shattered. Its culture was in ruins. The cities, the universities, the concert halls, the museums. Rubble. The Marshall Plan rebuilt the economy. But culture wasn’t a priority. Not at first. Then the Iron Curtain dropped. And suddenly culture became a weapon. American diplomats, academics, artists & scholars flooded Western Europe. We funded their universities. Supported their orchestras. Rebuilt their museums. Promoted their intellectual life. Not because European culture needed saving for its own sake. Because Eastern Europeans were struggling for Maslow’s mist basic needs. We needed the view from the other side of that Wall to be intoxicating. So America built Western Europe into a showcase of self-actualization. Art. Philosophy. Cafe culture. Long vacations. Universities where people studied literature instead of surviving. We were manufacturing jealousy. And it worked. The Wall came down. But here’s what no one accounted for. When you give a society self-actualization on someone else’s tab long enough, they forget it was a gift. They start believing it was organically theirs. And when they look at the country that funded it all, a country busy building aircraft carriers and semiconductor fabs and shale fields instead of reaching the Maslow’s pinnacle. An overweight American in a ball cap who can’t tell Monet from Pissarro. Who eats fast food. Who drives a truck. Who builds strip malls instead of piazzas. And to a culture trained in aesthetics but stripped of strategic awareness, that American looks uncivilized. So the arrogance takes root. And once a culture decides another is beneath them, they stop listening. Americans say wars are sometimes necessary: crude. Oil is the backbone of prosperity: unsophisticated. Kids build companies in garages that reshape the planet: crass. Wall Street finances the global economy: vulgar. Europe has no world-class technology sector. No military capable of strong defense. No energy independence. No AI capacity. What Europe has is culture. The culture we paid for at the expense of us reaching Maslow’s pinnacle. For decades that was fine. We funded the museums, protected the sea lanes, and tolerated the sneering because the arrangement worked. Then Europeans stopped keeping the contempt private. They started saying it to our faces. In their media. In their parliaments. At every international forum. “Americans are stupid. Americans are violent. Americans are a threat to democracy.” We could have moved the Louvre to NY. We could have built a Venice here. We could have stolen your best artists, designers, philosophers and more… like your conquering armies did for centuries. Instead we funded them. And all we asked for in return was to let us visit. You don’t have the military to defend your borders. You don’t have the technology to compete. You don’t have the energy to heat your homes without begging dictators. What you have is an 80-year superiority complex FUNDED BY AMERICANS, protected by American soldiers, and built on the false belief that self-actualization is civilization. It isn’t. Civilization is the ability to sustain itself. By that measure, Europe isn’t a civilization at all. It’s a dependency with better wine. That’s not a threat. It’s a weather report. Build a Navy. Or don’t. But stop lecturing the people who made you “better than us” Our “crudeness” our “stunted liberal education” our “ugly strip malls” are because we sacrificed our culture to support yours."
The Sarcasticat on X - "Everything here applies to Canada. I've seen it. That smug disdain of Americans. I rage against it but no one listens. Canadians honestly believe they're better. It's disgusting. There is a difference between Canada and Europe, though. The US won't be affected if Luxembourg or even France collapse, their smugness turning out to be a poor defense against tanks and terrorists. Canada, not so much. It's a huge deal if Canada allows a foreign power like China attempt a takeover. Though Canadians led by Sinophiles like Mark Carney and Justin Trudeau might think living under China's control is better than aligning with the US, they need to realize that the US won't allow Canada to make that choice. Geography constrains Canada's ability to destroy itself just to spite America."
Young Canadians are increasingly miserable. Government priorities show why - The Globe and Mail - "For nearly two decades, the World Happiness Report has asked people around the globe to evaluate their happiness on a scale from zero to ten. The latest evidence for Canada is frightening. Research by three Canadian academics shows that the average life satisfaction of younger Canadians – those under 30 – has fallen from 7.6 in the late 2000s to 6.4 in recent years. This steep decline, they report, “places Canada just above Venezuela, Lebanon and Afghanistan on the list of countries experiencing the greatest fall.” And the news is getting worse. This past month, the World Happiness Report released new data for people under age 25. Canada now ranks 72st globally – below the United States, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. All the while, baby boomers remain relatively happy. The latest international data available for those aged 60 and over, from 2024, show Canadians in this group rank eighth out of 143 countries – 50 places higher than those under 30. A gap that large should be setting off alarm bells in every legislature in the country. Many of the underlying factors are well understood. Younger Canadians are squeezed between lower earnings and higher housing costs. Millennials and Gen Z study longer and take on more student debt, only to fall behind where Gen X, and especially boomers, stood at the same age... Federally, Old Age Security is by far the largest federal spending program, providing $18,000 annually to retired couples, including many with six-figure incomes. By contrast, Ottawa considers reducing the Canada Student Grant from $4,200 to $3,000 and cutting housing spending by half if the National Housing Strategy is not renewed. Provincially, medical care now dominates budget growth, driven by predictable increases in use by an aging population. As a result, spending on child care, K-12 education, postsecondary, housing, youth employment and climate action is crowded out, while deficits grow. We should be protecting people in retirement and ensuring access to care in old age. I’m proud of these Canadian achievements. But what’s missing is reciprocity. Governments have not matched the rise in spending on boomers with new revenue from that generation, which leaves too little to invest in affordable housing, education, training and family supports for their offspring. This is what systemic ageism against younger Canadians looks like in practice: a pattern of decisions at the cabinet table that no grandparent would make around their family table. Most older Canadians would not choose a future in which their own happiness comes at the expense of their children and grandchildren. It doesn’t have to be this way. Within Canada, there is a clear contrast. World Happiness Report authors show that the drop in life satisfaction among young Quebeckers is roughly half that of their peers in the rest of Canada. Policy helps explain why. Affordable child care reduces pressure on young families. Lower tuition limits early-life debt. More generous parental leave supports family stability and social connection. These policies, together with housing prices lower than in B.C. and Ontario, buffer younger Quebeckers from economic pressure eroding well-being elsewhere... This is not a Robin Hood proposal – taking from one generation to give to another. Governments have already played the Sheriff of Nottingham, shifting resources from millennials and Gen Z to boomers. Today’s typical 35-year-old pays 20 to 40 per cent more in income taxes to fund healthy retirements than boomers did at the same age. It’s about restoring fiscal balance so every generation can thrive."
Left wing logic: as long as there're unhappier people around, it doesn't matter that Canada is falling down the happiness rankings
Time to accuse Americans of suffering from false consciousness and boast that Canada is still superior to the US
The Kids Are Not All Right and Neither Is Anybody Else - "Canada ranks 15th on the world happiness index in 2024. This sounds pretty good until you compare it to 10 years ago when we were fifth. The results are more dismal for young people. For those below the age of 30, Canada ranked 58th out of 134 countries. When broken out into sub-metrics, the only one to improve in the last decade is generosity (from 43rd to 17th.) The relative ranking of GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy at birth, freedom to make choices and perceptions of corruption have all deteriorated since 2015. The need to reverse this trend is axiomatic: Everyone would be happier. These feelings also have real economic impacts. Research shows that increasing happiness (by 1 unit on a 10-point scale) led to a 12-percent increase in productivity. When it’s sunnier out, people make more credit card purchases. Happier people have more satisfying work, tend to have more psychologically fulfilling lives, and are more likely to live longer and healthier lives. They also tend to be more creative and productive and stay more socially connected. These benefits, in turn, flow back to families, workplaces, and communities, creating a virtuous well-being cycle. Conversely, negative affect and emotional exhaustion are related to lower productivity and more “presenteeism.” Employers and policymakers should be concerned. A less happy population is less productive and spends less. When Canada has had six consecutive quarters of declining GDP per capita, we cannot afford to get any sadder. Overall, Canada’s happiness rankings show the most significant deterioration in the freedom to make choices, where Canada’s rank has fallen from second to 38th since 2015. For social support and GDP per capita, Canada’s ranking fell about 15 places to 20th and 21st, respectively. Healthy life expectancy declined by nine places to 18th, and perceptions of corruption fell by six to 13th. These trends are certainly concerning, and that concern only increases when looking at changes by age group. Happiness rankings improve with age. For people 60 years of age and older, Canada ranked eighth (Table 1). Older Canadians have had relatively consistent happiness scores since 2006, though there has been a slight decline. It’s a different story for Canadians under 30, whose happiness has fallen further than young people in 130 other nations. The only countries with a worse decline are Jordan, Venezuela, Lebanon and Afghanistan. This is both shocking and puzzling – those four nations have experienced war, political upheaval, and prolonged high inflation that dwarfs Canada’s recent inflation bout. Meanwhile, US numbers exhibit a similar pattern to Canada, though the magnitude of declining happiness is lower for young people."
6ixBuzzTV on X - "#BREAKING: Federal Liberals agree to ban social media accounts for Canadians under 16"
Karla Treadway | Host Sovereign Sphere Podcast on X - "I’m a parent. I parent my kids. I never let my kids use social media until they were older - it’s not hard if you do your job. But that’s another conversation because this is not the government protecting your kids. This is the government wanting…..
1) YOU to show your ID before you access the internet
2) The kids to be kept in the dark about real events in the world"
Dr. Oren Amitay | Facebook - "I know that some people want to present various stats to claim that Canada, under the rule of the ironically named "Liberals" for the past 10 years, has *not* been deteriorating significantly. However, *these* are the stats—which I have verified—that are crushing ordinary Canadians. How can *anyone* among the "elbows up" crowd deny such *facts*? The answer? Cognitive Dissonance Reduction would explain it thusly: Individuals who keep voting for a party that has proven itself to be incredibly incompetent, deceptive, dishonest, authoritarian, corrupt, self-serving, "woke," nefarious and destructive lack the psychological and emotional wherewithal to acknowledge their ill-advised decisions/actions—because they would interpret such folly as an indication that they are not as "good" or intelligent as they want/need to see themselves, rather than recognizing that they keep making terrible "mistakes" or errors in judgment. Other factors are involved as well for some of them, but Cognitive Dissonance Reduction does explain so many of the irrational and harmful decisions we see people of *all* political persuasions make."
How Poilievre’s biggest strength became his biggest weakness - "When Canadians were asked to identify the biggest threats to their quality of life and the country’s future, the top answer by a wide margin was Donald Trump and U.S. economic and trade policy. Thirty-one percent ranked it as the number-one threat, and 46 percent placed it among their top two concerns. No other issue came close. Immigration registered 18 percent, climate change stood at 12 percent, and artificial intelligence at 10 percent. The real significance of these numbers is that they clarify the ballot question now shaping Canadian politics. Political outcomes often turn less on ideology than on the question that voters believe they’re answering. When politics is framed as who will fix what is broken at home, the conservatives possess obvious advantages. They continue to poll strongly on affordability, economic frustration, and immigration. Coletto's top-line numbers still place them at 38% nationally. But when politics becomes who can best protect Canada from an unstable world, the dynamic changes. In that context, competence and steadiness matter more than insurgent energy. That naturally benefits Carney, whose economic credentials and technocratic temperament fit the current mood. The cross-tabs are revealing. Among voters who identify Trump and U.S. trade policy as a top threat, 57% say they'd vote liberal and only 26% conservative. By contrast, among those most concerned about government overspending, 58% would vote conservative. Among those focused on immigration, 62% lean conservative. Canadian politics, in other words, is presently being sorted less by left and right than by competing perceptions of danger. External threat versus internal decline. This helps explain the conservatives' current paradox. Poilievre's great strength was that he embodied change when nearly everyone wanted it. But now that a sizable share of voters are looking for stability, the traits that once read as urgency and conviction are interpreted as volatility or risk. In that sense, Poilievre's former strength and current weakness are two sides of the same coin. None of this is permanent. If trade tensions ease, inflation worsens, or Carney disappoints, the ballot question could turn inward again"
Weird. The PP haters claim that it's all his fault
John Thomson: What will you sacrifice for Canada? - "Ever since the United States carried out its military operation to detain former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, many Canadian media outlets and pundits have circulated a steady stream of articles aimed at stoking fear over what they see as the menace of President Trump and U.S. foreign policy. On 9 January, the Toronto Star published an opinion column by Jason Stanley, a professor of American studies at the University of Toronto, who wrote, “Many Canadians have simply not adjusted to the fact that they live next to a fascist state whose president has imperial designs on Canada. This is not alarmist or hyperbolic.” The same day, The Globe and Mail published a similar column titled “Wake up, Canada. The Trump Doctrine is aimed at us”. The author, Tony Keller... It is worth pointing out that the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail are not inconsequential media outlets on the fringe of respectability, although the cogency of their opinion columns may leave room for doubt on that score. No, these are central organisations in Canada’s media landscape, and if they are publishing these opinions, it is fair to assume a significant number of Canadians agree with their editorial slant. That position appears to be that President Trump poses a risk to Canada’s sovereignty, both economically and militarily. That makes it a worthwhile thought exercise to consider the “what if?” scenario in which the United States actually invades Canada. How would Canadians respond, and what would they be willing to sacrifice for the country? Based on the number of comments from users on social media who profess their willingness to take up arms against a U.S. invasion, that response would be overwhelming, and the level of sacrifice would be high, including giving up their lives. Laura Babcock, host of The OShow Canada’s Pro-Democracy Podcast and owner of Power Group Communications, shared a post on X stating that in response to a U.S. invasion of Canada, “a million of us would sign up to a citizens’ army if given the chance.”... There is nothing wrong with wanting to defend Canada. It is a noble and admirable cause. I know this first-hand. I was honoured to wear our country’s uniform for 20 years, and I proudly wore its flag on my shoulder when I deployed to Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. But why do the most ardent online patriots only ever want to defend Canada when it comes to the hypothetical scenario of an invasion by the United States? The answer is because it is easy. The risk involved in saying you would fight to the death for Canada in an imaginary war against the United States is less than zero. There is absolutely no danger to you, your family, your career, your home, or your way of life. Yet if the threat to Canada is so significant that it needs to be trumpeted vigorously in the pages of our national newspapers, why are these millions of die-hard keyboard patriots not queued up outside our Reserve Force units, volunteering to serve in our actual citizen army? After all, the time to prepare for an invasion is before it happens, not after, when organising a response is infinitely more challenging. The next step in that train of thought is to ask why Reserve Force strength is still below 30,000 for a nation with a population of more than 40 million. You would think that after a full year of credible “51st state” annexation rhetoric, that number ought to be five or ten times larger... Joining Canada’s Reserve Force is a greater commitment than avoiding U.S.-made products at the grocery store, or vacationing somewhere other than Florida during the winter. It is an actual commitment to Canada, and there are real sacrifices to be made... if you are not willing to make the smallest commitment to sacrifice some of your personal time for your country while it is at peace, why should anyone believe you will find the courage to risk your life at the outbreak of war? When faced with real danger and real risk, all the puerile patriotic fantasies of guerrilla warfare and glorious combat dissolve when splashed with a cold bucket of reality. That reality is that war is cruel, and insurgencies are even more so. It is a struggle to survive, not only against a vastly larger and better-equipped military, but in unforgiving environments, with the ever-present risk of injury, death, or capture. And once you start fighting, you either have to keep going until you win, you are dead, or you give up. If you want a sense of what that entails, watch the footage coming out of Ukraine. Canadians talk a good game about fighting for their country, its values, and its ideals, but they are not willing to walk the talk because they have not had to fight for it in several generations. We outsourced that responsibility to our so-called invaders. We barely do the basics of a healthy, functioning democracy. Fewer than 70 per cent of eligible Canadian voters can be bothered to cast ballots in our federal elections. But suddenly we are all willing to take a bullet for it? That is quite the leap in logic. Likewise, Canadians will not raise a credible defence against foreign interference undermining their democracy, but will apparently stand to the last man against a U.S. military incursion. Whether your government is toppled by force or usurped through foreign interference, the result is the same, so why not the response?"
