{it’s not a typo}
Ever since Mark Carney got up at Davos, first quickly checking his facial expression for anything that might convey humanity, then promptly dousing it with RAID—
—wagged his schoolmarm-y finger at the assembled beautiful people of Europe (and Donald Trump), and explained, as though to a bunch of depressed hormonal adolescents, that the future was, basically, downhill all the way from here (but with solidarity!) ever since then, NotAmericans, formerly known as Canadians—I know, right? lol— have been feeling just a little bit—oh, what the fuddle-duddle is that word?
Proud? Oh, pshaw. Strong? Puh-lease, the lifeboat is rocking! Confident? Minerva, my ribs!
By the way, everyone seems to think that Mark Carney, with his bland bureaucrat vibe, his admittedly expert handling of not one, but two central banks through two huge crises, and his good fortune at not being Justin Trudeau, signals great things for NotAmerica’s future.
I certainly agree that he signals great things for business. Did anyone notice the first thing he mentioned at Davos as a major victory? He cut taxes for corporations. Literally the first thing he mentioned. His gimlet eye is focused on de-coupling NotAmerica from reliance on the US market, which reads very well in light of the fact that, after about five minutes of friendly banter with Trump, he seemed at first to establish a respectful relationship.
But that was only because Trump was taken by surprise and hadn’t yet worked himself up into a Trumpian tariff tantrum. Trump doesn’t really care who’s running the frozen loser-country of NotAmerica, because he already has decided that NotAmerica’s destiny is to become America.
Carney is Uncle Mark, Justin was Big Bro Trudeau. Mark has Serious Issues to Deal With. Big Bro, that pretty little thang, was a fluff ball of hygge, worried about gender-balanced cabinets and trans rights. He didn’t lower corporate taxes, that might have messed his hair!
He did, though, single-handedly save the Canadian economy from collapse during the pandemic, by issuing funds to every Canadian who might need them, no questions asked, keeping small businesses from failing, keeping people fed and their rent paid, forestalling what would have been a tsunami of evictions. (If you worried about the resulting deficit, you need to educate yourself about modern monetary theory and get back to me.) He was a model of proper behavior, following the protocols, getting vaccinated and publicizing it.
Big Bro Trudeau stuck in the hairy craw of “real men” because of his girly not-serious emphasis on human rights and pronouns and social justice, sort of. (The First Nations plea for safe drinking water fell on distracted ears, though the offer of fifty percent off a Brita filter was a nice gesture.) The eternal corporateness of the Liberal Party just kinda steamrollered over him as he stuck daisies down the barrels of guns.
Uncle Mark, that breath of stale boardroom air, means business. He’s not pretty. He doesn’t bat his eyelids. That means ordinary guys like me struggle somewhat to divine our future. What of his commitment to affordable housing, getting the government back in the business of building? I didn’t just imagine that, did I? I mean, is my future a tent in the snow? And Uncle Mark just struck a deal with China! China! Not to build affordable housing, though.
Canada has been committed to housing as a human right, as a signatory to the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), since 1976, but I still struggle, through my watery 70-year-old eyes, to see anything but single family dwellings on an acre of golf course, continued financialization of home ownership, out of reach for most, and towering jerry-built investment condos with units like walk-in closets and walls so thin you could hear bacon frying next door, assuming your neighbours can afford bacon at 11.99 for 454 grams. Have any of our leaders actually been in an apartment? Like, that you rent?
I guess housing and human rights will just—trickle down! For housing, picture Dorothy’s house trickling down on the Wicked Witch of the East; for human rights, think of Blake:
… How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls …
I’d say unequivocally that NotAmericans have been feeling noticed. It’s not something we’re used to, so forgive us if we pull our tuques just a little bit further down on our heads as we stand abashed, twirling our toes in the dirt like the pimply girl at Prom and saying, “Aw, shucks, eh?” Compared to the US we’re an entire nation of introverted copycats. (We tell Trump to eff off by flying to Switzerland and giving a lecture, so allergic are we to direct confrontation).
Which may be a little surprising, since we have always defined ourselves by saying we’re, well, NotAmericans. You know how to do this: it’s like saying women are just inferior men with parts missing, or gay men are just failed heterosexuals waiting for the right inferior man with parts missing to come along. The gender thing is obviously a lie, since mankind aspires without fail to the condition of being men.
Likewise, every citizen of every shithole on earth aspires to be American. But we’re NotAmericans, damn it, try as we might, and thus we must needs live in the icy shithole of NotAmerica.
When, oh when, will our great destiny be fulfilled? We do our damnedest, in between bragging about universal health care then voting to defund it, and hoping our army bases built of Lego bricks will simply be appreciated for their retro charm (we forgot that we should maybe acquire a few planes that don’t require you to spin the propellor before you jump into the cockpit.)
True to our hapless NotAmericanness, we try. We watch American TV, go cross-border American shopping to stock up on cheap goods sold by workers wrangling their third job, fly to Florida to enjoy American temperatures that won’t turn us into novelty ice cubes, and basically gobbling up American culture like it was a big garbage plate of dump cake.
Other than that, totally our own thing. Totally.
I mean, that’s how we started — United Empire Loyalists, plus a few thousand enslaved people who escaped up here via the Underground Railroad. As you were busy rioting against arbitrary taxation, and establishing your national identity, your Calvinist economic system and your rich-white man political philosophy, we demurred.
“Not for us!” we whispered, lest anyone should take account of our opinion. “God Save the King! OK, then!” and immediately set forth on the all-encompassing quest and Sunday church picnic community activity of cultural genocide against our First Nations people, euphemistically called “taming the savages.”
We were busy. We had stuff to do. Like sticking needles through the tongues of First Nations children when they spoke their own language, or tasking the brides of Christ with burying them in mass graves in front of the torture pavilions masquerading as schools. We’re still not dealing with the fallout.
But many things conspired to bring America and NotAmerica together. Despite our British parliamentary system (which would have forced a “no-confidence” vote about three weeks into Donald Trump’s first term and brought down the government, ready for the return of sanity), we, too, have a plethora of political parties ranging from democratic socialist to burgeoning Christo-Fascist, with the occasional weirdo to add some spice, but, also like you, a first-past-the-post voting system that’s so dysfunctional, it effectively reduces the political landscape to two parties and delivers majority governments to parties that clearly did not deliver a majority of votes.
That’s where the Brit kicks in, because why would you ever want to change anything?
Unlike you, though, we have clear guidelines for campaign contributions, and government campaign funding for all parties that cross a threshold of support. For example, for 2026 the limit is $1,775 per individual per calendar year to a registered federal party, its registered associations, or candidates nominated by that party. Corporations and unions are not allowed to contribute, and an official agent, an auditor in effect, is appointed to handle all the campaign finances for each candidate from beginning to end.
We don’t really need all that much money anyway, seeing as our election periods last a minimum of 33 and a maximum of 55 days.
I suggest you try out these strategies sometime, on a rainy day, and see if it doesn’t remove some of the rank corruption. You’re welcome, and also unlike you, our Senate isn’t voted in, it’s non-partisan, and senators are appointed from all walks of life; we call it “the House of sober second thought.”
Oh, and also unlike you, our Supreme Court judges are specifically allocated by region; candidates must be superior court justices or have 10 years of experience as lawyers; must retire at 75 years of age; and are selected — wait for it — to ensure sufficient representation of gender and historically underrepresented minorities. We consider it prudent and as adding credibility to our legal system if the highest court is truly representative of our people and our values.
The current Supreme Court of Canada is majority female (five out of nine justices).
Geography. Geography exerts a certain pull. Wear belt and braces in Alberta: the pull south is so strong you may end up in your skivvies the next time you find yourself by a tar sands pool or hacking a rib roast off of a perfectly contented steer. And please note that these activities are mandatory, just to make sure you’re not some communist easterner, liberal, vegetarian or leftie-terrorist climate change wokester.
Alberta is the first pit-stop on the westward journey into madness. The foolery blows up the eastern side of the rockies, condensing into some light drips of disdain and discontent, then doubles back around Edmonton and pours just shy of an atmospheric river’s-worth of full-blown, sage and onion scented, cracker-barreled, goldarn tootenest, vaccine-denyingest, libertarianest right-wing hog doody that y’all ever did hear.
Well, in a vocal minority of the population, that is. But the thing with spunky fighters for the freedom to ruin everyone else’s life, is that, be they ever so the minority, they are the noisiest bunch of horse thieves. Damn!
Speaking of horse thieves, a contingent of Alberta citizen-tourists recently visited the US on a mission: to see if the US was interested in absorbing the Canadian province of Alberta. Normally, Danielle Smith, the premier (think governor) of Alberta visits on her own (she’s been a frequent guest at Mar-a-Lago), but this time they decided to try a posse of Albertan separatists, on the off-chance they’d do Daffy Danielle one better by adding all their brains together to make one almost complete brain. Besides, her party dress was at the cleaners.
Let’s take a baby-step back. You know how the news, be it traditional or rebel, focuses on trouble and strife, because human brains devour stories about trouble the way algae blooms suck the oxygen out of a pond? Well, ask David Attenborough or something, but in the meantime please know a few fun facts about our very own enclave where a minority of Beverly Hillbillies types (about 30% of Albertans) are in a constant state of aggrieved entitlement and petulant push-back (Alberta has always opposed federal power from its beginnings as a province in 1905):
- Alberta has dwindling reserves of oil and gas, which consists largely of oilsands. The tailings ponds created by this industry routinely poison native water supplies and the environment generally in order to produce less energy than it takes to extract the energy.
- Alberta has traditionally been “conservative”, and despite one brief interlude of left-leaning government, once again has returned to a de facto one-party system under Danielle Smith. Smith is a former shill for the oil and gas industry, likes to meddle with the courts, is a bona fide vaccine skeptic, and transphobic to boot. She came to power in 2023 promising to introduce an Alberta sovereignty act; this “enables” Alberta to refuse to follow federal legislation that it deems contrary to its interests and values.
- Jason Kenney, the previous UCP premier of Alberta, no slouch in the conservatism department, along with other colleagues, recently decried Smith as “crazy” and her sovereignty act as an “unconstitutional fantasy” (which it is).
- DID YOU KNOW: Until dotty Danielle became premier, Alberta was Canada’s acknowledged leader in renewable energy projects, with big investments in wind and solar.
- Smith placed a moritorium on all renewable energy projects, giving investors the willies by creating unpredictability and chaos in the electricity producing sector.
- Smith was also head of The Wild Rose Party (think Tea Party) until that party was combined with the less radical conservative party to produce the United Conservative Party.
- You can take Danielle out of the Wild Rose, but you can’t take the Wild Rose out of Danielle.
I’ve written about Danielle before, and I will surely do again: she’s committed to her own version of stateside flooding the zone, flouting her MAGA cred in a breathtaking mudslide of human rights roll-backs and threats to Canadian unity.
We all know, because we’ve all seen, that more mainstream conservative parties are more than willing to forgo their own stated values and take a big swig of MAGA when the aim is to retain power. Alberta conservatives, by uniting with the Wild Roses, obviously followed the blueprint of the US Republicans in this way. All is well—until the more radical party shows its true colors and the original, more centrist party balks (q.v. ICE deployments, arrests of journalists, anti-DEI, ad nauseum). But by then it’s too late: the regular cons are like the cowed babysitter who finds her charge has invited a houseful of thugs and drunks over to party, but is too terrified to call the cops as they tear the place apart.
FACT: News cycles focus on the admittedly newsworthy reports of a Canadian province openly consorting with the enemy of Canada, ignoring the reality that a majority of Albertans oppose separation.
Devious Danielle, speaking out of the other side of her mouth, has stated that she’s opposed to joining the US, but seeks an independent Alberta while remaining firmly in the confederation (just not in the sense of dropping her demands that Alberta be allowed to refuse any legislation from Ottawa that she doesn’t like). To this end, she lowered the bar for the number of signatures needed to call a referendum on Alberta separation.
What she doesn’t like is a lot. She doesn’t like carbon commitments, she doesn’t like trans teens being able to control their own bodies or use their preferred pronouns; she doesn’t like “political correctness” (when will that trope ever die?) she doesn’t like teachers teaching what she doesn’t approve of, and diverts funds meant for public education to fund charter schools; she doesn’t like books that present explicit sex in school libraries (the titles are a mirror of MAGA choices for banning). She’s clear that new immigration rules would apply to an “independent” Alberta.
Her latest gambit is a refusal to fund justices unless Ottawa agrees to a panel that will appoint judges that align with “Albertan values”. She has openly expressed the wish to direct decisions of the courts. Separation of powers, anyone?
She loves the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, though — specifically Section 33, the infamous Notwithstanding Clause, which allows the passing of laws which curtail charter freedoms for a five-year period if they are deemed “in the public interest”. She has used this supposedly last-ditch emergency mechanism four times so far: to force through anti-trans policies which give the state rather than families and medical professionals control over children’s lives, and strike-breaking legislation ordering teachers back to work.
It’s a favorite ploy of conservatives in this country when they get a whiff of anything that requires thinking about all their constituents, rather than just the ones who look like them. (Ontario’s odious Doug Ford is another fan of this short circuit.)
How then to characterize “liberal” Mark Carney’s love fest with Danielle? Suddenly it’s all hearts and flowers between Ottawa and Alberta, much the same as it was all hearts and flowers, for a brief period, with Ottawa and Washington. He signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Smith, promising to fast-track “her” pipeline to the BC west coast if she can find substantial private investment to fund it. I can’t help wondering if this isn’t a little disingenuous ploy to ensure the pipeline never gets built?
With inscrutable Uncle Mark, it’s difficult to say. Does he care about possible contamination of the BC coastline? Premier David Eby of British Columbia cares, but Danielle, unaware of the irony, exhorts Eby to be “a team player”, in other words, to pull together for the good of Canada, when it’s a question of getting her oil to market. When it’s a question of standing for “Canadian values” of inclusion, human rights, labor unions… the only team she’s on is Team Danielle.
Who is there to invest in a pipeline which, anyway, would be carrying oil for the Asian market? The American market is in glut, the pathways long-established.
Which failure would please our First Nations, who, as stewards of the lands we stole through treaties we never honored, have been guaranted consultation, and which Carney has blithely ignored, in effect saying, “trust me”. The leaders of the First Nations fear the ruination of their traditional hunting grounds, spoilage of salmon habitat, the contamination of Pacific waters via inevitable spills.
Just as the American economy was built on enslaved labor, so Canada’s economy is a colonizer’s economy, our natural resources are “ours” because the First Nations were the “savages” who didn’t know how to exploit them, thus didn’t deserve them.
They want the power of veto over this pipeline project and have vowed to use any means to stop it. Why would they trust another colonizer?
Justin Trudeau was a drama teacher, a lightweight, but was the child of Pierre, a brilliant statesman and staunch defender of both human rights and Canada, the ideal of our improbable country. Justin was not Pierre’s equal, by a long shot, but he understood in his guts what this country stood for, and his focus, however imperfect, was on the people, justice, the environment.
Does Carney know what this country is about, really? His impeccable pedigree is that of an economist, and he talks economy. But for all his plans and fast-tracking of nation-building projects, indigenous rights are waved away impatiently, as an afterthought.
What human rights are being waved away impatiently for our new deal with China? Who works in the factories there? What cost those electric vehicles?
For that matter, where is the coherence in all this? Why are we promoting costly electric cars with their hunger for precious metals, not investing in public transport that serves everyone? Why are we building pipelines for oil if oil is the driver of climate catastrophe? Could I speak to the manager or something?
Justin Trudeau knew something about this country that Mark Carney does not seem to know and I’m more than a bit uneasy about his realpolitik. Deal with the US, deal with China, back here on the ground all the same people will fall through the cracks, all the same people will benefit. It’s the same system, just more cynical, equally inhumane.
Danielle Smith is in charge of Alberta because people were fearful for the future, fearful about jobs, about bigwigs in the big city making commitments around climate change, fossil fuels, carbon taxes, and scary stuff that they knew would have a major impact on their lives, but no one was talking to them. No one was giving them an explanation, laying out the plan, which I think would have happened if anyone actually had a plan. It’s increasingly obvious that no one does.
David Eby, premier of British Columbia, denounced those secretive meetings between Alberta separatists and the US as “treason”; though he may be a bit emotional with the rhetoric, it’s a feeling I share.
Isn’t this how the 51st state begins? It’s the worst possible moment for a Canadian province to be flirting with any kind of alternative relationship with the US; Trump will be salivating. Meanwhile, Toronto is breaking under the strain of the unhoused, the poor and the addicted. The shelter system during this diabolical winter is at capacity. It’s not as exciting as a weekend in Davos, but if we wave a white flag, could Mark Carney maybe make a deal with—us?
The Trump administration is coy about the Albertan separatists’ visit. They can’t confirm or deny…. Maybe they met, but they meet with lots of people, after all. You can’t expect them to remember everything!
Mark Carney has spoken out. He “expects Trump to respect Canada’s sovereignty”.
Because expecting Trump to respect anything has worked so well up to now.
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Pierre Poilievre saw his shadow and predicted six more years of Liberal rule