Canada to order military plane fleet from Sweden in shift from US suppliers
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
For those who aren't aware, the Boeing E7 is yet-another-delayed-Boeing project.
The UK has bought it but it has been continually delayed: https://breakingdefense.com/2026/03/uk-defense-official-boei...
Australia flies it (an earlier version) but today announced they are also buying three Bombardier Global 6500: https://www.australiandefence.com.au/news/news/bombardier-de...
Was. They are now part of Airbus, much like Bombardier Transport is now part of Alstom.
This is the 'right size' for Canada and other nations - the US doesn't offer a true comparable, and, looks like the US balked at buying the 'kind of comparable' Boeing E7 putting it in jeopardy.
With European military renaissance and the SAAB gear proving itself in Ukraine ... well, you see the shift.
This is the shift writ large.
This is going to happen across all industries.
I don't think it's going to 'fundamentally' alter the landscape, but it will be a shift we don't come back from.
Unfortunately, over the last 1.5 years, the political value proposition has turned by 180 degrees. - Being a U.S. ally no longer guarantees that you will be protected by the U.S. as Ukraine is seeing. But the U.S. has been tearing agreements left and right and the President has openly said he may not respond to a valid Article 5 invocation.
- Being a U.S. ally seems to bring even more threats from the U.S. as Canada and Europe are seeing
- Being a U.S. ally is no guarantee of protection even if you literally host American bases like the gulf countries are seeing. In fact, it’s only made them a target and the U.S. prioritized protecting Israel entirely over protecting any of the Gulf states.
The value proposition for buying U.S. weapons has become really bad at this point.
The US Ambassador to Canada is openly threatening Carney right now with some procurement things - the 'Big One' is the F35.
This is Can PM Carney playing a decent card, and biding for time until the midterms, and then waiting out the 'lame duck' period.
'Border State Republicans' are badly upset with the anti-Canada situation, and will buck Trump if given the chance without massive repercussions.
Trump may not force the issue if he knows he's going to lose.
If we see Trump with conciliatory language towards Canada after the elections, it's because he knows he's been beat. Or if he just shuts up about it and let's the negotiations roll.
I give it 50/50.
But - to be very clear - the world is 'doing 1 nudge' away from the US - not 'breaking away'.
We are unlikely to reach parity any time soon, if at all. But that isn’t needed for the goal to be worthwhile.
The US president threatened to take Greenland by force, that's a very real thing.
Mind you, it's one man, and not the nation or state, but he does have a lot of backers.
That's a very real concern.
My 2ct:
He is the duly elected leader in a representative democracy. He speaks on behalf of all U.S. Americans, he acts on behalf of all U.S. Americans, and all U.S. Americans share the same responsibility for the actions of his government.
He isn't the only problem, though. It has now been proven that the U.S. Constitution is not worth the paper it is written on. In my opinion, that's the real concern. Trump will not be around for long. The U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court, the people that allowed that to happen and the Republican Party will.
Edit:
At least the U.S. Constitution needs some amendments, and I don’t see that happening, but there may be some plans to amend it I’m not aware of.
Edit-2:
Of course, there will still be cooperation with the U.S. after Trump, but fundamentally, something is broken. We will not return to the pre-Trump state.
I am outside the U.S.
> that Trump is a temporary phenomenon
It is not. The unlimited authority, the supreme court that goes along with it, the party that supports it all, and the citizenship that enables it in the first place will be there long after Trump is gone. It's not Trump pulling the trigger.
It's not Trump alone. There was the Tea-party before him and there will be fascists after him. We are not talking about the USA doing some shady things. We are talking about a country that gave up on shared values and norms, that kills people left and right without due process and that assaults countries without reason, all while threatening the next assault(s) and being openly racist.
Oh god no. How wrong can you be.
The world is now well aware what the American people have voted for (twice!) and may well vote for again. We don't want that risk thanks.
Breaking things is much easier than making them. American democracy is going to take a long time to recover.
That didn't play out at the end of his last term. I don't think Trump is a "I've had a good run, lets call it a day." kinda guy...
As a Canadian, we regularly talk about "fuck American companies" in a way we never did. I still actively avoid buying anything from USA in grocery stores. City of Toronto is spinning up a nonprofit grocery store pilot, and they sure as hell are going to be trying not to stock USA goods -- the mayor herself passed an anti-USA procurement bylaw last year. Related: I just helped run a weekly community speaker series[1], where we had 60 ppl (many public servants) signed up to hear a presentation on a supply chain app to help people avoid American products.
And just 30 min ago, coming home at 1am, I was talking to the service guy for my city's bikeshare program. He mentioned new bike models were coming. He was like "fuck Lyft" and I said "I don't trust American companies anymore" and he agreed (Lyft acquired the Montreal bikeshare company we used to deal with). A friend who used to work for Deloitte is actively working to convince city officials to sever the bikeshare contract, and diversify the network for similar reasons.
PRAGMATIC anti-americanism is literally a new hobby for a sizable cohort of the citizenry. It's the only rational choice, and many perceive it as literally a matter of sovereign survival.
[1]: https://guild.host/events/from-tariffs-to-transparency-x69sg...
How much more is the US supposed to do in Ukraine beyond the $60-70 billion in weapons and supplies? Do we need to actually go to war with Russia?
Intel probaly, but we don't know the exact arrangements there. And nothing like before.
A lot less to it’s allies than it was I’d suggest.
Yes. That's what everyone signed up to [0] when Ukraine gave up its Soviet-era nukes.
I don't think we need to go to war. We need to find a way to deal with Russia with humanity instead of treating them like some boomer-era cold war bogeyman.
But part of that would be getting Russia to stop attempting to become a cold-war boogeyman, and stop behaving like a cold-war boogeyman.
Russia also signed that treaty, and is also blatantly breaking it.
No? Don’t want to trade land suddenly?
Are you even aware of what has been going on in Ukraine for the last 4 years, and in Crimea for the last 12?
Sometimes the only way to deal with the boogeyman is to accept they are the boogeyman because of their pattern of behaviour.
Russia has never asked for a land deal. They started the war and their goal has always been the total destruction of Ukraine and the enslavement of the people.
Where they’ve pulled back from occupied areas they’ve mass civilian graves and bodies with signs of torture.
- Ukrainians are the second largest ethnicity in Russia.
- The majority of people living on a currently contested territories of Ukraine used to be USSR citizens.
- Russia got the majority of Ukrainian refugees since the start of a war if we count per country.
- Pretty much all the former Ukraine citizens got Russian passports and a citizens of Russia now.
- And yes, if Ukraine is using cities as fortresses and do not evacuate civilians from there, high chances are that after weeks and months long battles those civilians end up in graves with nasty wounds on their bodies.
No. Never was. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Russia
> - Russia got the majority of Ukrainian refugees since the start of a war if we count per country.
No. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1312584/ukrainian-refuge...
You might be confusing abductees with refugees.
> - The majority of people living on a currently contested territories of Ukraine used to be USSR citizens.
The majority of people living on contested territories of United States in 1775 used to be British citizens. So?
> - And yes, if Ukraine is using cities as fortresses and do not evacuate civilians from there, high chances are that after weeks and months long battles those civilians end up in graves with nasty wounds on their bodies.
Absolutely vile propaganda.
However, it is not said which is the territory for the 1926 census data, it may have included a part of the present territory of Ukraine, because the borders of present Ukraine are very different from the borders of Ukraine after WWI.
Such census data about Russia and the Soviet Union are hard to interpret without precise knowledge of the corresponding territories, because the fluctuations in numbers may be unrelated to natural growth, but determined by administrative reorganizations or forced deportations.
Funny how those reasons don't matter in the least when it's time for russian losers to bomb civilians in Kyiv
"Nasty wounds" like their hands tied behind their backs and a hole in the back of their skull? That kind of thing?
That sounds like the definition of a war crime to me.
Ukrainian were second largest ethnicity in Russian Empire/Russian federation until massive massacre in 1932-1934 years, when an uknown number of Ukrainians between 7 million (confirmed by Russian Duma at 04.02.2008, adults only, childrens are not counted) and 25 millions (total number of USSR citizens died because of hunger, number from soviet archives captured by Germans in 1941) was murdered or starved to death.
We tried that in the 90s. Didn't work. Made things worse, really.
Please explain your analogy. Everyone should give up their property whenever they are threatened? For free, or whatever the aggressor chooses to give them?
> I don't think we need to go to war. We need to find a way to deal with Russia with humanity instead of treating them like some boomer-era cold war bogeyman.
What does that mean? How would you deal with them with humanity? Just give up your country when they invade?
https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/P...
There is a lot of misinformation floating around the internet about this memorandum.
Furthermore, even Wikipedia states: "The Budapest Memorandum is not a treaty, and it does not confer any new legal obligations for signatory states. It was written in a way to avoid an impression of legal obligation."
Otherwise this is a nonsense objection. "You have to give me $1 million. You haven't proven otherwise in court!" What is the actual evidence for your position?
Second, USA should not negotiate for Russia nor help them. They are doing both.
sigh
800 Patriot missiles were used within the first 3 days in the Iran war. This is greater than the total number of Patriot missiles received by Ukraine during the entire war with Russia.
Your orange president is displaying some funny priorities.
But we are talking about sovereign states here that have been around for centuries- they are neither amused nor cowed.
Simply put, they did it twice, who’s to say Trump 2.0 won’t be worse.
This whole “Democrats will take the house and it’s back to normal” attitude they have when it applies to foreign politics is naïve, oh we’ll continue to trade and we may still buy some military stuff and so on but that’s simply because the US is so large and integrated that decoupling isn’t quick or entirely necessary/possible immediately.
The paths pretty clear at this point, it’s just early enough that it hasn’t become widely obvious that the existing world order since post WWII is gone.
You're already seeing this as some MAGA people split and even go so far as admitting they were duped, MTG in particular.
The US never promised to protect Ukraine. It's often claimed that the Budapest Memorandum was a promise from the US to protect Ukraine, but this is misinformation. Read the memorandum for yourself if you don't believe me, it's not very long:
https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/P...
Well then maybe the US stopped sending them weapons in order to address the underlying problem?
What problem is that solving?
>Ukraine was essentially invaded because they became too friendly with NATO (and hence america).
Wouldn't this theory predict that if NATO/USA becomes hostile to Ukraine, the invasion will cease? According to bawolff's worldview, Trump's foreign policy will address the root cause, no? They should be supporting Trump.
Of course Ukraine does not want that, hence war. Surrendering is always a way to gain peace, but most countries do not view such a peace as worth the cost.
Ultimately the war continues because USA is not the only western country in existence and the rest of the west is still willing to provide support sufficient for Ukraine to keep fighting.
Russia's ambitions are laid out in the ultimatum presented in 2021.
Also because it was considering joining the EU.
The Russians threatened at least as early as 2008 that they would invade Ukraine if they did either. They actually invaded Ukraine in 2014 and captured a lot of territory.
Why did the US and their European allies not plan for the Russians doing what they had threatened to do and had actually done in the past? It seems incompetent.
Point 4 of the Memorandum: "The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used."
US actions in the UN: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7435pnle0go "The US has twice sided with Russia in votes at the United Nations to mark the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, highlighting the Trump administration's change of stance on the war.
First, the US opposed a European-drafted resolution condemning Moscow's actions and supporting Ukraine's territorial integrity - voting the same way as Russia and countries including North Korea and Belarus at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.
Then the US drafted and voted for a resolution at the UN Security Council which called for an end to the conflict, but contained no criticism of Russia."
The US has almost nothing to do (vote in the UN against Russia aggression), and yet did less than that. They can hide behind technicalities, but the truth is that Trump is acting like a Putin asset. For decades there has been a political fight in eastern Europe where the US projected power supporting governments that sympathized with western countries (enter NATO, enter UE, enter western markets, welcome western industries). US was winning the fight without shooting a bullet until Trump.
US has no official treaty with Israel (except the 10 year rolling aid), yet we would be shocked if suddenly an US government turn to support Israel neighbors and vote against them in the UN.
You keep mixing up pre- and post-Trump events as if nothing happened, technicalities, "but you said X", and nobody that was trying to debate in good faith does that, only one interested in "winning" the argument but with zero interest in getting somewhere productive.
As I stated elsewhere in this thread, I'm an isolationist, and I don't care if the US loses leverage or whatever. If all US troops are booted from Europe so we can no longer "intervene" in the Middle East, that sounds fantastic. I favor a Swiss-style foreign policy for the USA.
From my perspective, it would actually be very good if Europe cut off the supply of AI chips to prevent AI companies from building an omnicidal doomsday machine:
Unless you want to buy Chinese jets your choices are either F35s or a big step down to 4th generation fighters that are materially worse in terms of capability.
Modern 4th gen fighters are still very capable, cheaper, simpler and more reliable, but if you ever do end up facing an adversary who has 5th gen fighters you'll be in trouble, so the trade off of choosing not to buy F35s is very real
A 5th gen aircraft on the ground is not very useful. It's easier to bomb out 100 aircraft than 400 aircraft. A 5th gen aircraft, disabled remotely via software is not very useful.
Amazing planes and all, but given that America is struggling to win the wars it starts, how useful are they?
Necessary but not sufficient.
Winning the war is more about strategy and political savyness.
Further if your 5th gen jets are relying on tech from your adversary....
Non-stealthy 4th gen fighters are sitting ducks in 2026 against a peer opponent as we've seen in ukraine
Even when Serbia was bombed during the Clinton years, American stealth bombers escaped not due to stealth but because they used decoys towed by fiber optics which transmitted what the missile seeker expected to receive from the plane while also aggressively jamming the missile seeker so the missile hit the decoy not the plane. One stealth bomber was hit anyway.
Safran and other European manufacturers arguably produce decoys that are as good as anything US planes have, arguably better because they decided not to go all in on stealth and focus on other measures instead. Stealth is certainly better to have than not but stealth also means somewhat worse aerodynamics and much less serviceability. You need to apply stealth paint and cure it any time you work on the plane. The plane needs more work and is harder to work on because of the tradeoffs made to achieve stealth. So instead of 75%+ of the planes being available at any one time, you only have about 50% of the planes available at any one time and total operational costs are much higher.
Given these disadvantages, it's not completely clear how much of a benefit 5th gen stealth is in a near-peer conflict. If the US is fighting Iraq fine. Now, if you can actually achieve what defense manufacturers say they will achieve with 6th gen stealth, where you have much lower RCS to all bands of radar from all directions, that could be a game changer but we don't actually know yet. The F-35 still doesn't do everything it was supposed to be able to do when the program started, so I would take these claims with a large grain of salt. And stealth countermeasures will continue to evolve.
At altitude most AA is radar based, thus a lower RCS will help directly in not being seen. So you can get closer to the enemy you still can see because of the higher RCS. For BVR fights this is essential.
Those machines shouldn't be low level though. IR missles don't care about RCS. It is not their natural territory either.
Third that Cessna is not hidden either. From above (i.e. an AWACS) it can be seen very good. From the ground it can hide low and slow. But so can dedicated planes too, which is practised regularly.
I'm just thinking about something like the meteor missile, if you're up against a 5th gen jet with shorter range missiles, the 5th gen jet doesn't necessarily have the advantage.
Then there's things like drones. A cheap drone with a good missile is arguably the better option than an expensive jet with poor weapons.
Yes, the best option is the good jet with the good missile, but most militaries have limited budgets, so it isn't a question of having all the the things, but one of where that money is best spent. I suppose you could argue that the military knows best, but then the US military insisted on keeping cannon around on jets just in case, so it seems to me, at least plausible that the current view is more about inertia than bang for buck.
4th (4.5th) generation that reliably works is something dependable, even if not top notch. Something tells me that if you took F-35 to russian-held Ukraine airspace, it may not survive that long anyway, its not like its unhittable as Iran showed. What decides that war is anyway drones in numbers and their skilled use, not anymore artillery, tanks or endless armies of poor illiterate fuckers.
Also - the landscape is changing.
Stealth is a standoff mechanism, but weapon systems are starting to change the value of stealth.
There are some who think that stealth mechanisms are being defeated with better sensors.
However if you're Canada there may be one or two issues with building your air force around Russian or Chinese hardware, even if they were available
I think that is a little oversimplified. America did spend resources on defense of gulf states. They might feel it wasn't enough but it definitely wasn't nothing. I imagine defending Israel was probably a fair bit easier given the distance from Iran, and their domestic military being a lot more prepared and practised for missile defense, which may have translated to more effective results. Ultimately though i think there is a limit to how much America can reasonable do on defense once something like that starts.
Probably the thing gulf states could most reasonably be pissed about was starting the whole adventure in the first place without much regard for the fairly predictable consequences.
No offence mate, but did you miss the bit about the USA starting the war?
My point precisely.
Btw, we just got this news report here in Sweden:
Sweden is giving Gripen jets to Ukraine
https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/vr3znL/uppgift-sverige-...
Aftonbladet is Sweden's largest daily newspaper. They have a fairly strong track record on government and defense scoops.
The supposed announcement is tomorrow morning, local/CEST.
If they can't, then the EU should not exist - literally. It's decisive evidence that the bureaucracy can't even face an existential threat on it's own existence because it can't organize it's own legal concerns.
"We remained lawfully committed to juducial integrity and processes ... as we were exterminated!"
This situation is similar to 'many other things' (capital markets, tech investment, border/migration concerns etc.)
Thats standard for military aid to other countries. Almost all US military aid to Ukraine was spent in the US for equipment purchases. The benefit for Ukraine is getting the weapons to use in the war, although it's worth noting a decent portion of the military aid will be spent by ukraine on domestic manufacturers.
Also €30 billion is financial and humanitarian aid, almost all of which will be spent in ukraine proper.
> Also - I think that EU is going to try to figure out a way to get that Russian money.
It's already sending the interest on the money to Ukraine, that alone is worth billions a year.
Simply seizing the rest is more complicated and additionally probably not preferable. Keeping the rest immobilised gives europe and Ukraine a substantial bargaining chip in negotiations with Russia when the war eventually ends. Either Russia agrees to concessions to get the money back or it doesn't and it agrees the money can be sent to rebuild Ukraine.
In fact - if Ukraine were to have had that $90B 2 years ago, it may have accelerated the situation (though not guaranteed).
This is not 'EU strategy' it's EU crawling out from it's own disorganization.
This is Putin's only great advantage - to take advantage of complacency, bureaucracy, and inability for European nations to react with coherence.
If the EU was organized, Putin wouldn't have been able to make a move, not even in 2014.
The same thing in tech: no cloud, no mobile - and now no AI. These things have real ramifications.
For example, Ukraine's' decisive advantage right now is Starlink - as much as I don't like Musk, and that he has been allowing Russia to use it for years (turning a blind eye, though that is stopped now) - it's now being used by Ukraine to assault 100Km in the rear and could 'turn the tide' of the conflict.
Europe has no 'Starlink' because it's disorganized and complacent - and the Starlink competitor is years away, will be minimal, may never happen.
So even as the technology proves to be 'plainly decisive', the reaction is not strategic or organized.
It’s a wild time.
No, I don't think that would make sense.
> "We remained lawfully committed to juducial integrity and processes ... as we were exterminated!"
If you're happy being governed without process or accountability, why not just surrender to Russia? If the EU can't maintain its principles when things get tough then what's the point in having it at all?
The rule of law, including judicial integrity, is their great strength. Corrupt dictatorships never are as wealthy and as powerful. Russia has always been far behind, and is falling further.
What is violation of what rights?
Every time a similar story, of a country turning away from US trade, is posted HN, people post that it's not political. Not only is that claim thin and largely unsbustantiated, but why is it such a focus?
How can this be true - the only reason humans still need military equipment of any sort is politics.
We are not fighting aliens, just stupid politicians that suddenly choose to throw people at a problem instead of using words.
That sounds like a fundamental change.
>As of March 31st, 2026, Airbus reported a commercial aircraft backlog of 9,031 aircraft. Based on the company’s 2026 delivery target of 870 aircraft, this represents approximately 10.4 years of production coverage.
>Boeing’s commercial backlog stood at approximately 6,719 aircraft at the end of March. Using Forecast International’s production estimates, Boeing’s backlog equates to roughly 10.1 years of production coverage.
https://flightplan.forecastinternational.com/2026/04/14/airb...
They do not mean that the people who ordered them today are wanting them today. If you need them in 10 years time, you need to order them today. It can easily change, if a flight company doesnt want to do business with Boeing or Airbus, they can cancel their pre-orders. Then the pre-order list might shrink really fast.
..yes? Companies are still placing orders, despite knowing how long the backlog is. I also expect the 737s will still be sold in 20+ years time, much less 7-10.
Canada is aligning itself with it's European Allies. Several EU NATO members have chosen the same aircraft over Boeing.
> 10.4 years of production coverage
Kinda true, airlines and manufacturers like to do big order announcements/deals for their future needs of few years all upfront. If Airbus suddenly delivered all 9k aircraft most airlines simply cannot afford it, or take possession and use them even.
For example Indigo is Airbus only operator with a fleet of 450 today and has around 920 more Airbus aircraft (10% of the book) on order. Neither Indigo or Indian aviation sector( of which Indigo is 60%) can triple the capacity today . India need serious upgrades (Terminals, Runways, Gates, new airports) coming online and also demand maturing, i.e. more people can afford to fly for that kind of volume to make sense which even the best scenario will happen over the next decade.
For more mature/slow growing airlines it is function of existing fleet age and the optimal point each aircraft is retired/sold , doing it too early will make them unprofitable .
It is a less a backlog and more their next 10 years of committed sales.
P.S. There is whole other industry aspect around Buy-Sell-and-leaseback financial engineering that can drive order volumes a bit. The backlog/order book also have commodity futures aspects.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/05/21/italy-moves-to...
I guess insulting and threatening your allies isn't great for arms sales.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8qSZO4jvTI
(You can watch just the first minute to get the gist)
And for some more data than anecdote, the current polling where the US is now 14 points behind China in net approval. https://news.gallup.com/poll/707945/china-edges-past-global-...
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/06/11/views-of-the-u...
You can see even with Biden as president, around half of Europe's population regarded the US unfavorably. This was at a time when the US was sending more aid per capita than almost all European countries:
https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1hd7aud/military_ai...
There's no point in trying to please these people. They'll accuse the US of warmongering one year, then demand that the US help them fight a war the next year.
You didn't give me enough good grades for my actions, therefore I run amok now, doesn't sound like healthy behaviour.
Yep, we could've gotten the same level of favorability by doing nothing, just like Switzerland. All of that stuff about the "soft power" we supposedly get from defending Europe is nonsense.
>You didn't give me enough good grades for my actions, therefore I run amok now, doesn't sound like healthy behaviour.
I'm not defending Trump's foreign policy. I'm an isolationist. I'm simply saying there's no reason for the US to try to please European public opinion. You'll never get anywhere.
Europeans just don't like the US. That's been true for as long as I can remember. If they aren't criticizing our foreign policy, they will criticize our domestic policy, as though how we handle our internal affairs was their business. Europeans essentially view the US as a vassal state.
Under Obama you had the reputational fallout from the Snowden leaks.
Before Obama you had Bush Jr's wars, with especially the Iraq war being very controversial.
Sure, tell me about Trump's first term where he made statements about Europe's relationship with Russia that look incredibly prescient with the benefit of hindsight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpwkdmwui3k
>Before Obama you had Bush Jr's wars, with especially the Iraq war being very controversial.
Yes, I'm an isolationist. I say the US should end all defense commitments and warmongering. Starting with Europe. US should withdraw from NATO, because Europe complains about US foreign policy the most. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Carney's Davos speech was powerful, but those words needed to be followed by actions, which I think we are seeing. I'm used to being so disappointed by politicians.
Canada's aircraft industry has been on life support since long before Trump took office, having been forced to partner up with China.
The C-Series was divested to Airbus, the Dash 8 isn't produced anymore, and all Bombardier proper produces are biz-jets.
https://www.reuters.com/article/business/trump-administratio...
Whether the C-Series would have been profitable for Bombardier without the extreme heavy-handed US intervention is not particularly clear but the outlook already wasn't great - still, it's inarguable that Boeing leveraged lobbying to quicken Bombardier's demise.
its straight economic warfare on behalf of Boeing
This era is over. US defense companies now need to compete for real.
So it's relevant to ask if this would still be happening without Trumps antics, even isolationists like JD Vance wouldn't force our allies hands like this.
The problem is his pied piper like hold on the populace which happened because the parties did not actually try to solve the problems. Sure they did solve some, but then they closed their eyes to the evils their group demanded - sanctuary cities on one side, and "right to life" on the other side.
We’re only a year into this madness. It’s only going to escalate.
US Presidents and other influential leaders, particularly Republicans, breaking any and all norms when it suited them has always been a thing. 'member Watergate? Moscow's Bitch McConnell? Bush Sr invading Iraq? Bush Jr invading Afghanistan (I'll give him a pass on that one though) and Iraq? Trump all but eliminating NATO, setting the stage for Biden to completely get bonked on the Afghanistan retreat, and now invading Iran? Republicans yapping about "financial stability" when a Democrat is in power and gorging themselves on debt and tax cuts for the uber rich when they get in power?
The US political system has been rotting from the inside for well over half a century. Trump was inevitable because when you got a rotting compost pile, eventually there will be fat maggots rising out of it.
If us Europeans are to trust the US again, y'all need, just like us Germans after WW2, prove you can be trusted again. Reform campaign financing, voter suppression, FPTP, the entire way how Congress works, break apart your mega corporations, and finally arrest everyone involved in Trump's presidency and, while we're at it, Sam Altman. Y'all need to go through a serious reckoning, acknowledge how hard y'all fried not just your own country but everyone else as well, make amends for it and prevent a repeat.
He is brazenly corrupt and petulant in foreign policy in a way we haven’t seen before.
Oh, definitely (although I'd say Bush's WMD lies regarding Iraq come pretty damn close).
But my point was... when the entire foundation and basement are rotting, eventually there will be pests exploiting that. If it wasn't Trump, the Tea Party and rabid Evangelical crowd would most likely have found another puppet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...
https://aerospaceglobalnews.com/news/pentagon-e-7-wedgetail-...
The modern F-18's and the new F-15's would have also made sense, but agreed that modern F-16s would seem to be a nearly perfect fit if a single engine is now deemed acceptable. Given we like to keep equipment for as long as physically possible (and then some), the F-35 might have more runway (rimshot) in that regard though.
To be honest, which aircraft we choose isn't going to be the make or break part. All the other terrible decisions that politicians make will be. Like waffling on a decision for another 10-15 years, paying cancellation fees, etc.
Then again, this is Canada - sensible decision making in military procurement just isn't something that happens here.
But the economies of scale are such that at least the $$ isn't completely out of whack (for purchase at least, maintenance I'm not so sure of). I would wager that the cost of maintaining those ancient CF-18s is pretty high now too though.
The F-15EX isn't a particularly survivable aircraft on its own. It is a plane you'd only use if you have stealth jets and you plan to do air combat at scale. It augments the capabilities of something like an F-35 but isn't something you'd add to your fleet unless you had a lot of stealth aircraft.
Canada could very well operate the F-15EX without a fleet of stealth fighters. The F-35 is not an interceptor platform in any sense of the word, in an "all out" scenario like you're suggesting it's doubtful they would be any better than the CF-18 they have today.
I just think it's a bit too rich for Canada's blood. Perhaps the whole-system costs do balance out in the end: surprisingly reasonable capex, capable at many roles, excellent at NATO combined roles, etc. There's a lot to like on the balance sheet. But the maintenance costs are killer, and we're talking about an exceedingly underfunded military (thanks to the politicians, our military do wonders with what they have).
I mean, in any real engagement our fleet is going to be blown away by a real adversary in short order. This is about presence and deterrence, I'm just not sure how essential stealth is to accomplish those goals. It sure is a nice pay day for Lockheed and friends though.
> Saab is also in the running to sell Canada some of its Gripen fighters.
The Iran war has uncovered a vulnerability of the USAF's approach to basing. The USAF likes to build large, elaborate air bases. Many of the bases used to attack Iran have been hit by Iran.[1][2]
Large air bases are tough to defend from drones and missiles in quantity. There are anti-drone weapons, but now that drones are used by the thousands and tens of thousands, some of the attacks will get through. A major air base is a big, fat, soft target. Both the US and Russia have recently found this out the hard way. Air forces now need to disperse and hide. Saab, which stresses operating from minimal airfields and roads, has aircraft better suited to that.[3]
Stealth may not help as much, especially for fighters. Geometric stealth, which is designed to reflect radar beams to anywhere except straight back, doesn't help for bistatic and multi-static radar. All the players in the current wars have some of those systems now.
So, as in WWII, air operations anywhere near the enemy require dispersal.
[1] https://defencesecurityasia.com/en/iran-strikes-us-bases-mid...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/01/world/middleeast/iran-str...
I would find it interesting if you can share with me hopefully a less restrictive chart than this. The data does seem interesting to me.
https://www.niradata.com/global-country-perceptions-2026
(From the above, following the link to free sample for USA data is very revealing. )
The net perception of US among its top trading partners being all negative seems a clear indicator.
Sad that niradata has paywalled rest of the data because I was interested in the rabbit hole of comparing different countries. From the data:
Across the 84 countries that evaluated the United States, 22 had a net positive perception, while 62 had a net negative perception. The average net perception of the United States is negative (-16), ranking #128 out of 132 countries.
This play seems insane because Time's Arrow points only one way, but it succeeded (in the sense that people supported it) because it's predicated on Facts Aren't True. It doesn't matter that Time's Arrow points future-ward, that's just a Fact not a Truth so we can just disagree.
Facts Aren't True can actually work for stuff where all you're doing is messing with people. Your Courts are just people and they can reject observable reality and substitute your own Truth with the Kavanaugh Stop, a week in jail becomes "brief" and your skin colour becomes "reasonable suspicion" for example. Your executives can pay themselves huge bonuses for imaginary success while concretely the company fails and eventually collapses. Stock markets can soar as the real economy they're "reflecting" buckles and fails.
"Facts Aren't True" is a stupid choice because unlike the people, Mother Nature doesn't give a shit about your Truth. So America won't actually become Great Again, but it is able to delude itself about this at a cost to its standing in the world and to its own future.
100 years from now, the last 15 months will be written about in no uncertain terms: this administration has loaded many footguns and pulled the trigger, over ideologies which are just plain stupid. "America First" indeed. Soft power is power. "Forever" wars are wars we shouldn't be in. Retribution by POTUS acting like a 5 year old is disgusting no matter what party that person came from.
It will take decades to recover from what has and will happen during this administration's run. Let's hope the power they have ends in November 2026 and not Nov 2028.
Saying that products with US based supply chains are rare does not somehow detract from the point of moving away from the ones that still exist.
And they do exist, just not for consumers, or at least not at a price most people are willing to pay.
And yes, most consumer goods from everywhere come from a Chinese supply chain ... but we're not talking about consumer goods here. We're talking in this case about military purchases. There aren't many western countries buying military hardware from China.
Nobody cares if their dollar store trinket was made overseas. And nobody would buy it if it was made in America because that same trinket would cost 5x.
People barely even care about their privacy these days, it seems.
But governments still seem to care about their military independence in the rare event they are at odds with an ally.
Though, one can buy inexpensive chinese ones if one knows where to look.
That's putting it mildly. Threatening to invade allies justifies stronger words.
From the article: "Saab is also in the running to sell Canada some of its Gripen fighters. Canada has a deal to buy 88 F-35 jets from Lockheed-Martin, but last year, after the US slapped tariffs on key Canadian imports, Carney asked the military to investigate whether it could cut back the order and buy some planes from another manufacturer."
Ask yourself: Why would a nation spill military secrets like this to the media? They're trying to put pressure on the US. Those Gripen fighters are in all likelihood staying in Sweden after all is said and done.
The future of air superiority, particularly with respect to sovereign defence is passive or quantum radar, autonomous A2/AD and directed energy.
or a whole series of arrows
It was built to shoot down Soviet bombers coming over the North Pole. It could not perform air superiority missions because it was too big to be agile. It could maybe be a strike fighter, but generally its reputation overstates just how good it would have actually been.
I wonder why ? I think we may be seeing a lot more of this.
Maybe we will get to see what US Corporations value more, real paying customers or large tax cuts w/stock buy back curtsy of US Gov Monetary Support.
* Arbitrarily slapped high tariffs on all goods from Canada while exempting Russia and Belarus.
* Threatened to take over the country by force.
* Officially suspended the Permanent Joint Board on Defense between US and Canada because of criticism of US foreign policy by the Canadian PM
The Saab is likely cheaper to operate as it's a smaller plane and Canada only has to patrol its northern border.
At what point on this current trajectory in the US would that change... mostly facetiously, but not entirely..
No coincidence that Albertans are sparking up the seceding issue again. When 10% of the population produces nearly 20% of the country's GDP it's a breeding ground for contempt. And it also seems like Albertans are the butt of a lot of jokes from the other Canadians anyway.
I'm sure this US government would love to see an "independent" Alberta.
This is hardly my experience as a Canadian. They're not Newfoundlanders, for crying out loud...
Alberta is very important economically. I'm from there. Ontario (I live there) and Quebec and BC are also massively important. And fanning the flames of disinformation and playing grievance politics to make Albertans feel discriminated against has become an extremely serious problem.
Wab Kinew was very eloquent on this topic yesterday.
When Alberta at least catches up to Quebec in practicing being independent (runs its own police, collects its own taxes, has its own pension system, maintains foreign services, ... They might decide the extra taxes to pay for such is less "fun". And they need a border to ship stuff through.
rounding errors east and west dont particularly matter
Ontario is one of Alberta's biggest customers.
Then there's westbound ... TMX capacity of 890,000 barrels a day, to BC ports (and then on to China).
vs southbound lines to the US
Keystone, 640,000 BPD
and Express 310,000
Please check your facts.
Show me the distribution. Show me the median not just the mean. Show me the standard deviation.
Otherwise ... abused.
Yes, we all know oil is an extremely profitable (and environmentally destructive) commodity. That doesn't make the typical Albertans somehow responsible for holding up all of confederation. Just means oil is making some people very rich. For now.
I'm from there and my family is in Alberta. I can tell you now that the oil industry ain't doing jack squat for them.
https://www.pgic-iogc.gc.ca/eng/1588343274882/1588355750048
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/abaondoned-oil-well-o...
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/what-did-alberta-do-with...
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-more-than-1...
But Trudeau had it out for Alberta. Better off separating. Yep.
Nunavut and NWT have higher per capita numbers, but that's territory versus province:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_provinces_and...
Yukon and SK are in the >90k range, both ~5k below AB.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Energy_Program
> Estimates have placed Alberta's losses between $50 billion and $100 billion because of the NEP.[32][33] Alberta still initially enjoyed an economic surplus due to high oil prices, but the surplus was heavily reduced by the NEP, which, in turn, stymied many of Lougheed's policies for economic diversification to reduce Alberta's dependence on the cyclical energy industry, such as the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund, and also left the province with an infrastructure deficit. In particular, the Alberta Heritage Fund was meant to save as much of the earnings during high oil prices to act as a "rainy day" cushion if oil prices collapsed because of the cyclical nature of the oil and gas industry.
It's much the opposite, Canada just spent $34B to ensure the Trans-Mountain pipeline got built. Alberta is the one that gets the resource revenue, but it's Ottawa that has to pay for your pipelines. That's hardly fair.
Alberta has one legitimate grievance, the NEP. Which is a plan that was cancelled by Mulroney over 40 years ago.
What hurt Alberta was every cyclical crash in oil prices, and their steadfast refusal to implement additional revenue streams like a provincial sales tax while spending instead of saving their resource-boom surpluses.
Because as you would might say: I'm sure this Canadian government would love to see an "independent" California.
The only thing really stopping Alberta from leaving is whether or not BC, Ontario, and Quebec are willing to fight a war to stop it.
And that gets a lot more complicated if the US also wants Alberta to go independent....
Unlike the individual US states, Alberta never joined Canada. It was not an entity that existed prior to Canada's confederation. Alberta was basically pencil-whipped into existence by carving out a chunk of an already existing territory (the Northwest Territory).
Despite American and Russian destabilization campaigns in Canada, there is no legal mechanism by which Canadian provinces can unilaterally secede.
>And that gets a lot more complicated if the US also wants Alberta to go independent....
Recent past polling overwhelmingly showed Albertans in favor of remaining in Canada. This latest frenzy is widely known to be a foreign influence operation.
Legal? Who's laws? Albertans can just declare that they don't respect Ottawa's authority, right?
Guns and bullets are the only "legal" currency. It's not paperwork.
Sure, but just like nobody gives a shit about what Sovereign Citizens do or do not respect, such a declaration would only carry weight if there are enough people that want to mount an armed rebellion. And despite what American influence operations would have you believe, there simply aren't. Most Albertans want to remain in Canada.
The Supreme Court has already ruled that Canada and other provinces would be obligated to negotiate terms of separation should a province ever vote to leave in a clear referendum.
Yes, support for leaving is probably at 10-20%. Just having the referendum will build the infrastructure and political machinery for keeping it alive for a long time from the first try. I live here and I'm not a fan of Smith for encouraging it at all.
I implied no such thing. In fact I was careful to use the term "unilaterally" when referring to secession. My understanding is doing it properly would require a full constitutional amendment.
Canada might not be willing to fight, but the Indigenous probably are.
None of this matters in this context. The indiginous people literally do not matter. It's bad, but it's just how it is when white Europeans start fighting over land in North America. We have 3 centuries of evidence.
They (and Sask too) do swing on the higher end in GDP per capita, but it's not a 2:1 by any stretch.
Which isn't that far off from BC's 13.80%:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_provinces_and...
I'm genuinely curious to know what you think the author's pre-existing beliefs are.
You seem to have a few of your own: "Canada only has to patrol its northern border"
the Canadians do not aggressively patrol the southern border because that is where all of the people are -- unlike the north -- and because the reality is that the entire Canadian military is basically a speedbump for if/when the US invaded in earnest.
You need a special kind of personality to be this confident while currently losing a war, one that is, well, associated with Americans.
I'd mention that whether a piece of tech can beat another one on one is a consideration but a larger concern is how maintainable your fleet is. Canada is specifically moving to grow ties with the EU (and has joined their defense industry network) which really incentivizes having a fleet that is a similar makeup to other European countries.
The tariffs and international unpredictability of the US is one motivator - but growing closer to EU markets is also a specific focus of the Carney government. The current Trump administration isn't even the only rationale for this - in 2017 the US imposed extremely heavy tariffs on Bombardier that bankrupted the majority of the corporation.
Often there are acute, specific needs, aka Canada has to land these all the time in the arctic, you need bigger hangars for the bigger gear, maybe we need 'more units for wider coverage' over large land mass.
Some gear is better v Russians, some gear for China threat.
Etc. Etc.
To address the article's context, is the E-3 Sentry superior to the Erieye/GlobalEye?
Canada has unfortunately been in conflict with Boeing since before either of Trump's terms, originally triggered by Boeing's trade complaints regarding Bombardier's government subsidies.
norad might not exist in 5-10 years
The E-7 Wedgetail is a vastly more capable platform than the Erieye/GlobalEye in pretty much every way, but costs four times as much, and there are other issues with Canada and Boeing as have been pointed out by another commenter.
The airframe itself, perhaps. As for the radar, that remains to be seen. The E-7 uses an L-band AESA radar, whereas the GlobalEye's radar operates in the higher-frequency S-band. In general, higher frequencies are better for engaging smaller/faster targets, but perform worse in adverse weather conditions.
It's been a long time since I took my electronic warfare courses, but in a situation where the radar is expected to spot small drones and other targets I would prefer a higher frequency radar.
It should be noted that the US military itself didn't want the Wedgetail in favor of a space-based solution, until Hegseth forced them for publicity reasons.
And in general this is how Saab has tried to court us -- by making promises (how real is unclear) to bring manufacturing jobs to Canada to build things.
That is something the US has not done, will not do, and most importantly cannot do under Trump/Bissent/etc.
Canada is very unlikely to be invaded, so the actual military effectiveness / superiority is only one factor. Reducing unemployment and enhancing our manufacturing sector is as or more important.
Except from the south.
But yes you're right. The only times we've been invaded were from that direction.
Looked it up:
4 Times the U.S. Invaded Canada
https://www.mentalfloss.com/history/war/4-times-us-invaded-c...
Pretty sure that's a prong of the southern strategy.
Trump has nothing to do with it.
Genuinely, what makes the US untrustworthy if not Trump? I’m curious what I may be missing.
We invaded Korea, and then Vietnam, and a few hundred other interventions that don't seem to be sanctioned by the international community. All because of a hardon for ideology that doesn't seem to actually reflect the interests of the people who live here.
what a terrible bad faith arguemnt
N Korea invaded the south and the UN voted to create a joint force in there to defend it.
The entire congress and senate of the US who sit by while he does this and the supreme court who lets him, entire departments of the US government co-opted by sycophants put in place by Trump.
There is little to trust in the United States at the moment, you look a lot like the Weimar republic.
> The entire congress and senate of the US who sit by while he does this and the supreme court who lets him, entire departments of the US government co-opted by sycophants put in place by Trump.
It is amazing how much people bend the knee to further their own ends. People like Stephen Miller who probably see Trump as a useful idiot, and hold great contempt for him, as long as he can enact his white supremacist agenda.
The leftist circles I run in like to joke that this could’ve just been properly avoided if we hadn’t fumbled reconstruction as a nation.
Israel had settlements in Palestine way before the conflict outbreak, and nothing explains the systematic targeting of civilian infrastructure on Lebanon but for Israel just going supernova, like Germany and Japan back then.
What Israel has done is a completely irrelevant to what Iran has been doing.
It's certainly easy to say "X provoked Y, ignore what Y did first to provoke X".
Iran would be a better ally. China would be a better ally. Fucking Russia would be a better ally. Why did we decide to die on the hills of (loosely translated, I guess) mageddo?
But instead our state leans into exterminating people because our PR team was inspired by Goebbels and was trained to hate muslims
But again, if you don't want problems with Israel don't make problems with Israel. Their populace is militarized like few other and seemingly with a lot of political cohesion. Egypt has learned not to poke the bear. So has Jordan.
None of that makes Iran better, not even now as they still execute daily. And are extremely harsh to own minorities. Oh, and to whole one gender.
Iran looks like saint when you ignore Iran actions. And again, yes, the war was bad decision.
Because comparative advantage.
And it is constitution itself. America had lawd trying to deal with above and supreme court gutted them.
Now that they're older, they're sparring once again, just like siblings do over the parents' estate.
The whole neighbourhood thinks you're assholes and bullies, we're all scared. But that is bring us closer together as result, so there's some upside.
Racism? Oh man, visit any other country that is more homogenous.... lol. Everything is relative.
Canadian and American racism is documented in specific events, unlike in other countries. I'd be hard pressed to find specific racism-driven events in Poland or Czechia, even though they top the racist charts.
I'm not American so your second point is completely moot.
He is unique in that he seems to have absolute control over the Republican base which makes all internal party checks fail. The rest is provided by a hyper polarized media landscape and a conservative supreme court majority that seems to be open to radical upheavals. The combination of all three has rendered the constitutional safe guards ineffective. In other words, we seem to have run into an edge case in the US constitution.
The supreme court won't change materially in the near future and likely the polarization will continue, but it's hard to image someone in the future with such an absolute grip on either party. So, hopefully a soft restart of the system in 2028 will be the last of this edge case for a while. That's the hope, anyway!
The two countries have far more in common shared interests than differences, so odds are things will drift back to normal in the future.
America chose this. America continues to tolerate this. America enabled this.
This isn't something that Trump can be scapegoated for. This is what many Americans wanted, or at the very least, it is what many Americans are willing to tolerate.
unless the US extinguishes all of its billionaires and somehow convinces 1/3 to 1/2 of their population to not vote against their own interests it'll happen again
The US constitution has absolutely nothing at all to say about political parties or the particular state of the media landscape, or for that matter the partisan alignment of justices of the supreme court. It's incoherent to suggest that there are "constitutional safe guards" that should have prevented the election of a president (or the exercise of power by that president), who is supported by about one-half of a very polarized electorate and opposed by a separate one-half. Everything about the Trump presidency is as constitutional as every previous US presidency, including the phenomenon of opponents of the president trying to claim that specific things they do are or should be unconstitutional.
Trump is already, on his own, a two-time phenomenon. Leaving aside broader cultural issues and patterns, "one-time only" has been clearly incorrect for a while.
Considering the right-wing politicians are trying to turn the country into a theocratic nationalistic dictatorship and the "left-wing" politicians are content with getting votes by nothing more than not being right-wing and collecting corporate bribes: good luck with that.
This is due to sanctions. There is no trade between Russia and the USA to put tariffs on.
Sure, the new one might turn into one too, but that's no reason to stay with one who is definitely one.
Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback. That's the obvious result of Trumpism - when you seek to turn every interaction into a short-term win for you, people simply stop doing business with you whenever they can avoid it.
Tens of millions of Americans voted for this guy three times, overwhelmingly twice - this is how the country wants to act.
If he and his cronies are removed from power and prosecuted and everyone pinkie swears to never go down this road again, maybe we can look into rebuilding some of that trust. In the meantime, you reap what you sow.
Canada can't solve this problem inside US politics. Only Americans can, at any one of the three boxes. It can only work to disentangle it's critical dependencies, and to protect its own interests.
Any country can elect chucklefucks or vote for something stupid. Some of them have systems that are more resistant to the long-term damage they cause. Some of them are less. The US is definitely in the 'less' category as all of the checks and balances and systemic inertia completely collapsed.
Also, the other big difference is that when Hungary or the UK sneezes, Canada doesn't catch a cold.
Even if the U.S. and Canada are enemies, if Canada is being attacked by a country that is not the U.S., then the U.S. will come to its defense because they don’t want another nation with the capability to attack Canada to have a North American presence.
So given that the U.S. is the only possible military threat to the U.S., and now that the U.S. has openly threatened Canada, it’s incredibly silly to buy weaponry from the only country that could militarily attack you and almost certainly won’t share repair material, parts, software source etc. and possibly has a kill switch.
maybe offer some targetting intelligence, but most likely the US government would look to sell out canada for peanuts, the same as trump has been looking for with ukraine, and now taiwan
I thought they were sanctioned to hell and back. Do tariffs even apply as a concept?
this has been happening before anyone even thought trump would run: in 2015 trudeau ran on cancelling the f35 purchase. So what did obama do to canadians?
Mulroney and Pierre Trudeau were bastards, and supremely consequential in Canadian history. Joe Clark and Paul Martin were boneheads.
Which ones Harper and Justin Trudeau are may be too soon to tell, but Carney is clearly a bastard.
[0] https://www.amazon.ca/Bastards-Boneheads-Canadas-Glorious-Le...
Frankly, the issues that Canada faces now stem from a long history of questionable policies, starting from when Diefenbaker shuttered the Arrow and stripped the talent and parts to be scooped up by Boeing, Lockheed et al all the way to when Mulroney & Reagan signed the FTA dooming Canada's private sector. None of this has been good for Canada's sovereignty and long term independence/success. A non-trivial amount of the SV luminaries that have started companies which showcase American inventiveness have a Canadian passport even though they don't advertise it.
The strained relationship with the US right now is actually providing ample opportunity for Canada to make some strategic long term bets without the "US foreign policy alignment" overhang. I'm optimistic.
he's worked through a lot of emergencies
It's like when your favourite restaurant gets taken over by new management, and you discover cockroaches and maggots in your Trenette al Pesto
You switch restaurants.
Given that the market for Volvo is global, it seems to me that Volvo Cars is still overwhelmingly Swedish, while at the same time being overwhelmingly controlled by Geely.
[1]; https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/vast/1000-personer-far-lam...
Volvo have factories in Sweden, Belgium, USA, and China. The new EX60 is manufactured in Sweden. The US factory makes the EX90, XC60, Polestar 3, and until recently the S60 sedan.
But including a company that hand-builds a handful of hypercars annually in a conversation about the auto industry in Sweden is not the flex you think it is.
Apart from Volvo, Koenigsegg and Polestar and Scania. Apart from that, you’re right.
Then last, but not least the UK basically threw the towel in too on a wide assortment of industries, but they’re now discovering that that was a big mistake.
Although my friend was working at an injection moulding company in Christchurch that did some parts for Holden (GM) in Australia.
Volvo and Polestar have their HQ in Sweden and huge manufacturing plants. They also develop platforms for some other Gealy brands including Link&co and IIRC also Zeeker.
And then there is the Koenigsegg...
They are also (unfortunate?) to share a border with USA and be party to NAFTA. This makes it trivial for educated, professional Canadians to work in the US on a TN visa indefinitely. We know that the doctor and nurse brain-drain from Canada to the US has been ongoing for decades. But it's actually every industry since US firms pay 2-3x more than equivalent Canadian firms.
The reality is that Canadians get very good, tax-payer subsidized educations and then immediately go to the US to work for 10+ years and only return later when they need to start drawing on the Canadian social services for things like healthcare and family care. And Canada itself got none of the benefits of that workforce in between.
I saw a figure recently that the US issued an all-time-high 800,000 TN admissions to Canadians in 2016. And then in 2023 it surged to nearly 1.3 million.
This citation is an order of magnitude off. The US doesn't really track/release visa numbers well, what you're citing might be the number of individual entries using a TN visa - visaholders go back and forth, it's not the total number of visa holders.
DHS estimates 130k Canadian visaholders in country in 2024. https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/nonimmigrant/populat...
Canada has 22m workers, so 130k working in the States is nothing like what you're claiming.
>their entire economy
Resource extraction is about ~10% of GDP, compared to 3-5% in the US and 1-2% in mainland Europe. Scandanvian countries have comparable resource extraction % of GDP. It's hardly the entire economy. It's also diversified resource extraction, it's not dependent on oil, etc. Your claim is overblown.
You write this declaratively as if it describes a typical or representative case. In the 11 years I’ve lived in Canada, this isn’t representative of what I see.
The direction of migration of medical doctors likewise shows signs of reversal. I’m a physician and my wife is a surgeon. We left the U.S. over a decade ago and are constantly receiving inquiries from US physicians about immigration.
I'm assuming you were educated in Canada, and then you worked in the US (but now you don't)?
Its actually the opposite: it had been going on for some time, but has reversed for decades, and in recent years Canada has had _increasing gains_ of medical professionals from the US.
>The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) reports annually on the number of physicians moving abroad and returning to active practice in Canada (CIHI 1996–2005). In the early to mid-1990s, net losses averaged 400 per year. More recently, the number of physicians leaving Canada has decreased significantly, resulting in net gains of between 30 to 60 per year. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2645159/#:~:text=Th...
Sweden was forced to take their defence seriously due to their geography and political will. Canada has had an easy ride and when the going got expensive, we cancelled our domestic programs (most famously the arrow, but also a lot of other stuff).
There are few examples where this isn't the outcome.
This has happened across Canada for well over a century, across every sphere. And in the process the Canadian input is retconned out of existence and Americans ponder why Canada "doesn't make anything". They post ignorant nonsense about how Canada is resource extraction in a trench coat or similar nonsense.
Sweden had nothing like this, and they punch way above their weight class because of this. Though that has been changing, for instance with a Chinese company buying Volvo, etc.
The only protection against this is...protectionism, whether explicit controls or implicitly by ownership or funding structures. Canada became a leader in nuclear tech by the nuclear industry basically being government owned. It became a transportation powerhouse by a government owned railway. And so on.
Change is afoot. Carney has made significant efforts to stop just sending hundreds of billions to the US and most military procurement will focus on Canadian products and innovation. Which leads to lots of gnashing and screaming by propaganda rags like the US-owned PostMedia (yup, even a lot of our media gets absorbed by the US, at least where it isn't explicitly barred from doing so).
Not entirely true. AstraZeneca and ABB are examples that remain partly Swedish but many companies were merged into big multinationals and eventually marginalised.
Also, Canada lost many things w/o US acquisitions. What happened to Corel? Nortel? Research in Motion?
Germany doesn't speak the same language. It has a hugely different culture, history and peoples. No, you absolutely can't say the same thing, and I think you missed the vast majority of my post.
>Also, Canada lost many things w/o US acquisitions.
I'm not sure what the point of this is, and exceptions don't disprove the rule. Loads of companies rose and fell in the US as well, just like every country on the planet.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jlvb9czZFXw
[2] https://www.c-span.org/program/international-telecasts/canad...
The foreseeable future is MAGA candidates with a coin flip odds of winning indefinitely.
They're retooling because it doesn't matter who the next president is.
The only chance is if the cult spell breaks with trump, as cults rarely survive that. But it at some point it will be too late, their takeover and ability to fuck with elections means you can't vote them out anymore.
That and there's been a clearly protectionist bias also among Democrats as well. We had to lobby the crap out of the Biden admin to get "Buy American" provisions to not exclude some standard Canadian things, etc. etc.
At the same time, flipping things around... it's clear that Carney and Co are holding out for November mid-terms on the trade front. Conservatives here keep lambasting them for not sitting down to bargain with the US to hammer out a deal, which is just the stupidest losingest idea you can think of. Trump is going to get hammered in November -- why would we sign a deal with a loser like that? To our disadvantage?
These engineers came in handy when the Industrial Revolution started.
Thus Sweden has a long history of manufacturing industry.