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The last bit boggles my mind. I'm american. There's not a single bottle of whisky made down here that can compete with Canadian whisky.

Different product. Bourbon owns a lot of headspace with consumers, and is not available in most of the country right now. There are Canadian made Bourbon-like products, but nothing will fill that niche for purists.

I imagine there's a similar thing going on with California wines. But less so.

I think you're right for most.

I think Canada needs to come up with a trade name/standards for their Bourbon-likes.

Try Westward out of Portland.

Canada could have asked the Chinese to build oil terminals, pipelines and refineries. Not one drop of oil would have crossed the border.

Instead Canada chose to bind itself to the US.

> Implicit in all the "we'll bring Canada to heel" and "we don't need anything from Canada" talk is an Alberta/Sask exception. They don't mean AB/SK. They mean the rest of Canada, which leans further to the left politically and has more of a manufacturing sector or agricultural / forestry focus.

The paradox is that if we take the US administration at their word, that it is the trade deficit that is the problem they need to solve, then Alberta is 100% of the problem. Ontario, BC, Quebec have basically equal trade with the US. We ship a lot to the US, but we ship a lot of things we could make domestically from the US, though that is rapidly changing (for instance a major rail car manufacturing process is spinning up to replace that as an import from the US).

Alberta is basically 100% exports to the US, with negligible imports from the US.

So it's hilarious when Alberta says this isn't their trade war. Again, if we take Trump and his crew of stunningly incompetent self-dealing grifters and rapists at their word, it is completely Alberta's trade war.

Apparently because the US buys Alberta oil, the rest of the Canada should be punished somehow? How spectacularly stupid.

But yes, Danielle Smith is a vile human and is a traitor to Canada. I get why Albertans elected her -- there are legitimate grievances and a better "deal" to be had -- but she is going to do spectacular damage to the province.

> Apparently because the US buys Alberta oil, the rest of the Canada should be punished somehow? How spectacularly stupid.

I mean they clearly actually mean the opposite. And are doing the opposite. They're making moves to push Alberta out of confederation. I think at this point it should be clear the Trump regime funding and supporting Alberta "separatist" campaigns. At least giving it a megaphone far beyond its actual real local support base.

So, yeah, one way of "dealing with" the "trade deficit" there is to simply push Alberta out of Canada.

Another (longer-term) move is taking over Venezuela and getting an alternate source for heavy crude.

Notably both paths are being taken.

It seems like the pro-Canada side is letting Smith set the agenda, is not organizing much or being extremely present/vocal. Just hoping that polling is accurate and it’ll all blow over. It makes me very nervous in light of Brexit and the general unreliability of polls these days. I still think it’s a long shot, but why are they playing with fire here?

The most worrisome thing is that Smith has basically already said they'll reserve freedom to "interpret" the result of this "referendum" however want.

So if they see a number above 25% I can guarantee you they'll take that as a blank cheque to pursue all sorts of things that the majority does not agree with.

Somehow their provincial polling numbers as a party don't even reflect the unpopularity of this referendum. It's very weird.

I left the province 25 years ago during Klein years. The same insanity has always been there. My parents, brother, etc are all very anxious about this right now and openly talking about moving (less so my parents as they're elderly). And we just sent my eldest off to her first year at the University of Alberta. So a lot of skin in the game for our family. The whole thing is extremely.. fucked up.

Feels like a one party state sometimes. Despite the ANDP holding quite high levels of support, there's just this sense that no other party can ever be allowed to govern. My parents have had election signs removed from their property, vandalized etc in the past. I volunteered for the NDP in elections in the early 90s and was openly threatened. It's very weird.

The problems start at home;

https://afl.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/False-Promises-Bi...

I mean, the Venezuela thing is just incredibly stupid. Yes, Trump is trying to pretend that's a big win, but even if the US spent hundreds of billions actually building infrastructure there, odds overwhelmingly favour it being lost in the next revolution. It turns out people don't like to be robbed.

But yeah, I 100% understand what they're really doing. But they keep up with this trade deficit farce, and when there was almost an agreement signed (which would have been a massive mistake on Canada's part), Trump immediately started celebrating even more oil capacity from Alberta and reviving Keystone XL...which...jesus christ, keep some sort of consistency.

Alberta separatism is hugely unpopular and will fail, and even better even this tepid one is "be in Canada but with more individual powers and all the benefits of Canada" -- to even get to double digits they have to push an absolute fantasy -- but when it's tied with becoming a part of the US it becomes amazingly unpopular. Even right wing Albertans look at the corrupt kleptocracy the US has become and say no thanks. I mean, there are the loudmouthed slobbering smooth-brain sorts that say their stupid nonsense online -- they should all be deported, fwiw -- but they're a tiny minority.