Canada Announces Divorce from America | Hacker News Reader

Canada Announces Divorce from America

charlotteclymer.substack.com

156 pointsmooreds111 comments

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.

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

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

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?

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

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.

"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

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

Where's the dessert?

Russia of course

:D i think russia is the one running the restaurant. If you know what i mean.

"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.

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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.

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.

While it's decent to acknowledge the past, it doesn't make a country nice. just as Germany has no reputation for niceness despite their self-flagellation.

Canada's world reputation comes from the progressivism in the 60's and 70s, which has largely disappeared or failed (ecological science, multiculturalism). The undercurrent of canadian politics is just as neo-liberal as the US, and we differentiate ourselves on a facade of social progressivism. Canadians confuse their dont-rock-the-boat attitude with actual solutions to social problems. meanwhile they have similar political schisms as the US, just look at the Ford politial dynasty. Canadian niceness is mostly good PR.

A clear indicator is that Canada has consistently underfunded their military as a show of deference to our powerful neighbour. This is why all the bluster of Canadian politicians "taking a stand" against the US is theatre. The truth is in the state of our military and economic allegiances, which are mainly with China and the US, nothing nice about that.

Everywhere has its south.

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.

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.

> 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.

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?

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

I weep for my country (Canada).

This is a large, obvious, mistake.

> 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.

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.

> Responding to hostility with hostility is emotional, not rational.

And how do you classify to responding to hostility with submission?

Besides, Canada isn't even being hostile. A divorce is very different from abuse or harassment.

If the US is no longer interested in being a good-faith partner, what alternative does Canada have?

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

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.

They are working on making themselves less dependent. They kind of expect USA to try to invade them after it invades Greenland.

It is divorce in anticipation of a bout of domestic violence.

Canada will suffer greatly, and possibly much more than the US. But appeasing US, in the position of Canada, is akin to trying to reason with a wife beater.

You don't reason. You remove the victim from the hands of the aggressor.

It will cost a lot of money, and the Canadians will suffer greatly. But the alternative is to join America, which Canadians have stated don't want to.

I’m still waiting for an offer. :)

If you watch his speech and the follow up interview you he answers that directly (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDMyeGQm3NA @ 17:50). It's a good watch, better than the past 10 years of daily coverage by American media of what their dumb president and ex president is ranting about.

I am in the start up community in Canada. I can tell you that after the first threat from Trump every federal program to help tech start ups immediately pivoted to Asia and the EU. Before he started yapping, we were connected to Canadian representatives in the US, meeting about markets and opportunities. Now all programs are directed at forming partnerships elsewhere.

Canada has a dysfunctional domestic trade economy where it’s often easier to trade across borders with the U.S. than it is to trade across provinces.

Simply eliminating a lot of those domestic trade barriers would create more economic wealth than what Canada would lose by ending trade with the U.S. completely.

Of course in practice it won’t be that easy and the finances don’t usually materialize that easily, but the point is Canada has options for growth that are fully under its control.

The only sector where this is generally true is liquor. This is significant, but not massive.

Inter-provincial trade barriers for labor, especially licensed labor are also quite onerous. But it's still easier for a Quebecois tradesman to work in Ontario than it is for that same tradesman to work in the US.

Your logic is exactly why Trump's gambits always work. Everyone knows that individually standing up to a bully is a good way to get the raw end of the deal; so nobody stands up and the bully continues racking up wins.

It's certainly not guaranteed, but taking an aggressive defensive stance is the ONLY possible way to stop having your lunch money stolen.

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.

Yes, but that integration is turning into a vulnerability as Trump tries to leverage it for monetary or territorial gains. We won't retain the prosperity we built together by appeasing him. The prosperity is going away regardless. The choice for Canada is to keep our dignity or not.

Also, calling this a bad move presumes that the US isn't going to fall much, much further than it is now, which is seeming quite plausible. When your dance partner is heading for a cliff, you need to stop dancing with them.

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.

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?

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.

Military action would be brutal, but you can only say that it's unnecessary if the alternatives are better. If not now, then how many years down the line? The claims Carney are making are not light in their own right.

> 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

But didn't you get the order of events precisely wrong?

Isn't it America who threatened Canada (become a state of the US)? Isn't America who threatened Canada with extreme tariffs? Etc.

No, I didn’t.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93China_relations

yes, Tump did quite clearly

The USA has a long history of bullying Canada, long before tRump. He's just more blatant and obvious about it.

There is such a concept of carrot and stick. If the USA wants Canada to be a "good" (in the eyes of America) neighbour then for the love of God why don't they start using a carrot instead of the stick?

Unfortunately, the stick is still behind their backs.

> This makes the US a threat to Canada.

Don't fool yourself. The US of late has been making it perfectly clear that it's a threat to Canada regardless of what Canada does.

2-5 days is very generous.

I think if America started at 0dark30 they would be done by lunch and home for supper.

It would be like Iraq, they would quickly have Trump fly onto an aircraft carrier with a “mission accomplished” banner, then the Canadians would commit to guerrilla warfare for a few decades.

Canadians would commit to guerrilla warfare? For decades? Have you met Canadians?

Yes, yes I have. I've known a lot of Canadians over the decades. They would totally commit to guerilla warfare to defend their nation, same as most other people would. They'd be damned good at it, too.

If you think there's something about Canadians that would stop them from getting down, dirty, and vicious, then you don't know Canadians very well (and have never seen a Canadian hockey game).

Could they hold out alone over the long term? Probably not, but maybe. Smaller, less capable nations have pulled off such feats.

But also, they wouldn't be alone. They'd have quite a lot of support.

Would be hard to do if the people aren’t alive long enough to do it.

I guess, if your mental model is Command & Conquer.

Youre saying dont do a Ukraine?

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.

> economic models that have diverged from reality in important ways.

Can you expand on this?

Postwar, Western governments used straightforward economic models based on the three-part identity between exchange, interest, and inflation rates, all mediated by growth. They did this in order to make market environments stable to facilitate rebuilding Europe (juicing the growth term).

Inflation, for example, is obviously not a scalar.

All models are approximations. As we reach the limits of these models we must extend them.

There's no contradiction to resolve, Trump decided CAN should no longer benefit from proximity. That's the geopolitical reality under current US admin. There's nothing left to do but hedge and move on or wait for new US admin. Ontario auto is 2.5% of gdp, Alberta crude is 5.5%, other exports to US is 9%... i.e. 17% of CAN gdp. CAN US imports is 16% of GDP - it's reasonably balanced, and TBH US got better deal since that 5.5% crude is massive discount, CAN could be selling it for more if US meddling didn't prevent CAN from refining for decades. But broadly those are Canadian exposure. Really all CAN can do if US doesn't to trade without retarded geopolitical conditions is to hedge by diverting 17% export to other buyers and minimize the 16% imports from US (ideally circular Canadian substitution between provinces). Really if US/Trump throws hissy fit over reasonable economic rebalancing (not strategic shift, CAN not replacing NORAD with PLARF) with most of worlds' largest trade partner, then not much Canada can do but wait for next annexation attempt.

The contradiction is that Carney says in his speech that multinational organizations have stopped working, so Canada is doubling down on them.

He said legacy / naive multinational orgs where hegemons with disproportionate influence and exceptionalism can game the system to subordinate smaller countries, especially in stacked bilaterals. He propose variable geometry which is scoping down from "universal" multinational orgs to "exclusive" minilaterals of medium sized countries come together to hedge on issues against hegemons to avoid being on the menu. It's not a contradiction, it's proposing we move from rule based, to power based, i.e. like-minded medium countries need to bandwagon to leverage as bloc, which means entails being exclusive / eliminate weak links / prevent capture. It maybe wishcasting but it's a different arrangement than legacy system.

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

(voted for Poilievre btw).

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

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.

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

There's been lots of true action

- tariffs on American goods - embargoes of American liquor - trade deals with China and other nations - travel to the US down substantially

> 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.

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.

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

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.

Russia was offered to join NATO a long time ago, during Yeltsin years there was a whole lot happening to help the approach of Russia to NATO.

Don't know how old you are but if you are 40+ you should remember the NATO-Russia Founding Act, in 2000 Putin said he didn't see NATO as an enemy.

So this is bullshit, it's a narrative post-hoc'd into existence to justify the imperialist ambitions of Russia under Putin.

They were not offered NATO membership. Putin hinted to Clinton he would like it. Clinton didn't respond. Came back later (after consulting with his staff) and declined the offer.

Putin is smart enough to know that Russia is in no position to be an imperialist power.

The goal of keeping Russia and Europe (Germany) apart is not a secret. Please see Zbigniew Brzezinski.

And I'd like to point out that the Soviets kept Germany divided for a justifiable reason: 27 million Russians died at the hands of Germany's imperial ambitions.

And while we are on the subject of "bullshit", the war in Ukraine did NOT start in Feb 2022. It started long before that.

Helmut Kohl's was the one snubbing Putin ambition of NATO membership, not Clinton.

> And I'd like to point out that the Soviets kept Germany divided for a justifiable reason: 27 million Russians died at the hands of Germany's imperial ambitions.

And it lasted for generations, from 45-89, that's at least 2 generations of Germans who went through a divided nation. Has Germany been a problem to Russia afterwards? Doing what, buying petrol, and nat gas from them?

> And while we are on the subject of "bullshit", the war in Ukraine did NOT start in Feb 2022. It started long before that.

I never stated that, I live in Europe, the annexation of Crimea is very much in recent memory. The subjugation of Georgia previously as well.

Putin had support for decades to participate in Europe as a peer nation, even after Georgia in 2008. If Putin really wanted to be in NATO then why did he created an issue with Georgia becoming closer to the rest of Europe in 2003 transforming into a full blown invasion in 2008?

> Don't encroach NATO on their doorstep.

Why?

For the same reason that the USA would go ape-shit if Canada allowed Chinese military bases on Canadian soil.

Given the fact that tRump has threatened Canada it would be justified on Canada's part to invite those military bases but it would definitely antagonize the Americans. Would that be wise?

We're talking Real-Politick here not "how it should be".

They do invite military bases they just happen to align with the same politics.

I just don't get why Russia sympathizers act like Ukraine must absolutely be some kind of DMZ or neutral state. It doesn't make sense. They can do what they want and it's not an excuse to invade their country.

If Scotland had won independence and then later invited Russian bases on Scottish soil, would England see that as a threat or "Scotland is an independent nation and can do whatever it wants"?

Don't encroach NATO on their doorstep.

Norway, a founding member of NATO, has always shared a border with Russia. Before Finland and Sweden joined NATO, they'd already developed operational compatibility with NATO going back decades. NATO encroachment was an issue only insofar as it took away local targets for Russian expansion.

Bring Russia into NATO.

Putin desired NATO membership because then, any hostilities with another NATO member would become an intra-alliance conflict that NATO couldn't deal with. When Greece and Turkey fought over Cyprus, they were both in NATO, so neither side could invoke article 5 for help. Russia in NATO wouldn't prevent Russian wars, it would neutralize NATO.

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.

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.

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