The question close to the end of this piece, “Who do you think can best captain a ship through a storm? Because the storm, now, isn’t created domestically. It’s a storm created externally,” is an interesting question.
I don’t believe that it is as true as Mr. Coletto sees it. Just as we are constantly bombarded by the “settled science” of the type of climate change that can be responded to by taxing us to the Stone Age, so the economic storms coming to wreck us is self-inflicted. The “Bad Orange Man” is an easy target, but he is doing what he was elected to do, working to make his country better for its own citizens. The government of Canada has not been doing that for a very long time, creating the circumstances that is forcing Trump’s actions in his mandate to put his country first.
I dream of the day that my prime minister does the same for Canada. That is ALL of Canada, so that the poor country rubes out here in the Western part can have an equal volume setting for our voices. With the Carney confessions of his globalism, I don’t think he is going to be such a captain/prime minister.
Carney is only gaining traction, because the Conservatives have alienated their base. They are tone deaf, and completely missed what their core voters had to say on issues such as covid, the economy, globalization, climate change... Leslin Lewis is one of the few who caught the mood, and she was marginalized by the conservative leadership. (ironically, it is the Black Woman who gets it and the white men who do not)
Regardless, the Liberal Party has emptied their social bank account these last 10 years. For me and many people I know, they are done and will remain so for a long time.
Agreed. I would never vote Liberal, or NDP. I do not like the conservatives, so that leaves the long shot of the Peoples Party of Canada, who are almost invisible.
It is the lack of standing for anything. They were silent during COVID. When the NAZI spoke to Parliament, they were happy to applaud. They buy into the Climate Change diversion, while proposing nothing that would actually improve the environment. My own Conservative MP is a rabid war in Ukraine guy, and reflexively supports the Military Industrial Complex, with out asking what does Canada's Security actually look like in 2025. More to the point, they support the globalist agenda, if only by keeping quiet.
Do you see any redeeming value in the Conservative Party? I could counter some (but not all) of your points. However, I am long past the idea that any political party will reflect my worldview in total. I have even distanced myself from the notion that ANY good will come through politics that is not tainted by the various stains of human nature. I do my political duty and pursue other means of cultural change.
I also am aware that there are those among us who take the challenge of getting involved deeper than me. I hope all their success. The challenge, of course, is to fight the inevitability of Lord Acton’s adage “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Tough gig…too tough for most, regardless of their party affiliations.
The cost-of-living crisis, housing crisis, immigration crisis, and opioid crisis all derive from the same cause in all western countries. Globalization, financial dominance, monopolies. If Canada seizes this moment to TRULY divorce itself from the global banks and stock markets, it will soon solve all those problems.
Mark Carney belongs to the bankers and stock traders who are the problem. If he can become a traitor to his caste like FDR, he could do some good. So far I don't see any signs that he wants to break away from the lifetime source of his power and status.
I fail to see how bankers and stock brokers are the problem, given they were the ones who saved Canada in2008, while the rest of the world spiralled downwards.
Coletto is quite right to point out the change in the political zeitgeist since the Trump election. Like the horse returning to its barn even when the damn thing is burning down, many Canadian swing voters I think will - when faced with increasing domestic threats that Coletto identifies as producing a rising sense of precarity over scarcity (especially from all the firm and unyielding changes Trump represents to the progressive mindset) - return to the same Liberal barn (which is the way so many urban voters see 'Canada' as if a synonym to 'Liberal').
Carney is just holding the gate open and the leadership exercise is helping to advertise his presence as the perhaps the better qualified gate keeper-in-waiting to all Canadians. Poilievre isn't much better as he, too, tries to present himself and the Conservatives as better, stronger, more principled gate keepers-in-waiting to this flaming disaster that is now Barn Canada. (But we must always blame Trump for revealing this to us. Bad Orange Man.)
And good luck finding anything unifying across the country other than this mutual anger that we have to face a rapidly changing world starting with precarity, but politically dealt with best, apparently, by doubling down on doing the same things again that set the barn on fire, electing the same parties following the same scripts by the same people, that got us to this very point. Yeah, I'm almost sure that will make all the difference.
Perhaps if more folk better understood the very real connection between sowing and reaping that many rural Canadians seem to understand so much better than their urban counterparts (having to face nature not as we want it to be but as it really is compared to those raised inside urbanized, digitalized, and sanitized social media bubble worlds searching and finding reality-denying political narratives that make us feel better about ourselves, that studiously avoid owning our previous sowing choices over time) more folk today would understand that fighting the damned fire is what matters most. But I'm just not seeing it.
Tildeb, we subscribe to common sources and to common thought. :-) My thinking (at least at the moment) is that Trump is screwing some things up while heading in a constructive and and positive direction. More screw ups to come, for sure, but exciting potential improvements.
I particularly appreciate your comment "the very real connection between sowing and reaping". Canadians continue to have an increasingly passive and assumptive attitude towards government (63% voter turnout in 2021). Such "sowing" has brought us to the reaping of the "potential- takeover-candidate-of-the-year" that we now represent (in Trump's eyes). Massive debt, ineffective military, polarization amongst ourselves, eschewing of natural resources...and Canada as the ONLY BUFFER between the US and Russia. Were I an American, I'd worry about us too!
Please keep commenting. Those other guys were simply wrong.
When one supposedly tilts at windmills for decades as I have done about the very real negative consequences to the country - any liberal democracy - that teaches kids to either invert shared classical liberal values to authoritarian ones (the whole, I-believe-in-free-speech-but... crowd) and/or substitute divisive group affiliated identitarianism in their place (in the name of being 'kind' or 'on the right side of history') it's very frustrating to be proven so right so often about the earned negative consequences we must all face now when there have been so many ways and so many opportunities to alter course from this disastrous decades long path... to see the fire start and to watch it grow.
I've seen and delivered public curriculum at every level of education in Canada in different provinces that by stealth policies is very much intended to indoctrinate students with an anti-classical-liberal ideology that is now coming to fruition. This ideology - exchanging truth for narrative - is SUPPOSED to be divisive! Lo and behold. People - good people, often people who think themselves patriotic - actually clap when the national anthem is altered to 'our home ON native land' as if this demonstrates virtue and some magical path to 'reconciliation' that dispenses with the whole 'truth' aspect. These are the folk who remain oblivious to how this affects an dundermines and dismantles real patriotism, meaning love of country. Who'd-a-thunk turning love of country into a public display of shame and guilt to earn 'virtue' points for a blood-won inheritance might actually prove to be a problem later? What's surprising is how few!
It is also quite informative to have - and LISTEN to - both American and Canadian family members across the continent and on both sides of the rising partisan political divide who explain why they vote this way or that or have just given up. There are substantive reasons often buried under moralistic framing. This kind of framing is counterproductive. And it is SUPPOSED to be! I can appreciate how tiring it may seem to face and vote according to this ongoing losing battle on both sides about addressing common issues that truly matter but are framed by divisive identity politics for short term gain and privilege by those cash in on it. Problems without solutions. A Trump approach discarding this framing is a mighty breath of fresh air for many.
So I pay attention when Vance tells Europeans about what this shifting away from fundamental common values does to alliances very much based on them! Oh my. Who'd-a-thunk such a widening divide might cause division? Well... who wouldn't... at least among those that bother to think rather than just emote? Look at the widening voter gap between choosing political extremes of young German men and women! It's the loss of a common centre that should shock people rather than bicker over which extreme is the more 'moral' choice!
So how does Canada rank in this shifting landscape? Not well. And that's not good if improving relations based on common values between the two countries matter. And I think they do. Greatly. That's what is fast burning down. Once again, I think we've blown it. Adding Canadian tariffs fixes nothing. It only makes the matter worse!
So I marvel at the doubling down - the setting sun of Canada and all it once stood for - by remembering the modern version of today's opiate of the people: keep saying Orange Man Bad and do not buy American! Yuppers, that's sure to fix everything... with the singular exception of anything.
What bothers me is that all of a sudden in many people’s minds, Trump is the problem. The situation he has presented us Canadians with would be less challenging if we hadn’t already weakened ourselves internally. The notion that all the same federal government that got us here ( except the soon to be appointed new PM) is going to extract us from our current woes, seems depressingly silly. But I am concerned that no political party has the depth and talent to navigate us through the precarity. If there are adults among our MPs we need them to step up and show themselves, asap.
I find it amusing when pollsters lump all boomers especially boomer women into one category. I don't know of many boomers who watch the CBC anymore including myself a boomer and woman. If CBC published the number of people actually watching CBC news it would be very telling to see what if any value all the public dollars supporting them is actually delivering. Media in Canada has been decimated by the Liberals and it is now impossible to trust mainstream media.
Carney just another rich elite, celebrity Liberal in the Ottawa bubble who is more concerned with advancing his climate change policies and his resume than fixing the economic stress most Canadians are under. Carny definitely can not empathize with the majority of Canadians who have been and continue to be impacted by the current dismal Canadian economic situation Liberals created over last ten years. The Liberals were done for me a long time ago.
I’m GenX and I find this happens a lot with us too—the generalizations are not helpful. There’s a comedy I was watching that I needed to log on to CBC Gem and I was shocked by how awful even the ads have become. But I think the culprit is not just CBC but all legacy media in Canada.
I too am a boomer who doesn't watch CBC. However, we have friends and family who watch only CBC or CNN. They refuse to consider other sources of information and label it all as misinformation without ever giving it a try. Completely brainwashed and unable to get past the cognitive dissonance. Facts about the dangers of World Globalism etc just bounce off. Hopefully the young people are more open to alternatives to the approved narrative.
Found on Twitter: “Who’s watching? The CBC itself reported that viewers of CBC English television represented only 4.4 percent of the total Canadian audience, and only 2.0 percent tuned in to CBC News Network. By “total Canadian audience,” they mean all Canadians viewing all available TV programming at a given time. So, the CBC’s 2.0 percent “share” is actually far less than 2.0 percent of all Canadians.” —
@davidbclinton
Is that 2% an elite. For sure. Still, the CBC is our media of record. There's nobody else even close.
Tara, this arrived at exactly the right time for me. While I'm appalled at the realization of Trump's aggressiveness towards Canada and his rug-pulling on the Ukraine, I also reject Canada's single-minded hate towards him (and the USA more broadly). The notion of precarity (a word not in my lexicon) is very helpful.
Never have I encountered less rational thinking applied to a situation. It's almost impossible to have an unemotional discussion about Trump (with a Canadian) yet his accomplishments and directions are mostly positive. The "tariffs" are a wall that prevents broader discussion...perhaps like the all-consuming fear of the all-consuming Covid.
It would be good imho if politicians just shut up and let the tariffs come. Whatever. No retaliation. Americans are the ones to protest. You only feed a bully with attention.
I don’t believe this is about scarcity, rather it’s about a country being broken. The systems that governed us, took care of us, educated us, none of these systems work anymore. And why the older folks prefer to embrace a man who’s a liar, corrupted by his own greed, rather than vote for change, is the most distressing and disturbing piece of all.
Interesting perspective. I’m not sure that any questions asked by pollsters are relevant because there are so many Canadians, like myself, that refuse to answer their questions. Why? It is because polls are often turned around by the legacy media to try to influence public opinion. The legacy media have completely lost my trust and I’m not willing to share any information that will be manipulated by them to promote their views. The reality is that there are Canadians who will vote Liberal now that Trudeau has been replaced. There are many other Canadians who have their eyes open and will vote Conservative. Mark Carney may be a different leader but the arrogant and corrupt Liberal political players are all still the same. They have spent the last decade tanking our economy and making Canadians feel like we are not even worthy of having a country. Now we are supposed to believe that these same politicians are patriotic and can save us? This is a crazy idea but there will be some Canadians who buy it. Election results will let us know what is really happening in the hearts and minds of our fellow Canadians, not polls or reports by the media.
The question close to the end of this piece, “Who do you think can best captain a ship through a storm? Because the storm, now, isn’t created domestically. It’s a storm created externally,” is an interesting question.
I don’t believe that it is as true as Mr. Coletto sees it. Just as we are constantly bombarded by the “settled science” of the type of climate change that can be responded to by taxing us to the Stone Age, so the economic storms coming to wreck us is self-inflicted. The “Bad Orange Man” is an easy target, but he is doing what he was elected to do, working to make his country better for its own citizens. The government of Canada has not been doing that for a very long time, creating the circumstances that is forcing Trump’s actions in his mandate to put his country first.
I dream of the day that my prime minister does the same for Canada. That is ALL of Canada, so that the poor country rubes out here in the Western part can have an equal volume setting for our voices. With the Carney confessions of his globalism, I don’t think he is going to be such a captain/prime minister.
Carney is only gaining traction, because the Conservatives have alienated their base. They are tone deaf, and completely missed what their core voters had to say on issues such as covid, the economy, globalization, climate change... Leslin Lewis is one of the few who caught the mood, and she was marginalized by the conservative leadership. (ironically, it is the Black Woman who gets it and the white men who do not)
Regardless, the Liberal Party has emptied their social bank account these last 10 years. For me and many people I know, they are done and will remain so for a long time.
Agreed. I would never vote Liberal, or NDP. I do not like the conservatives, so that leaves the long shot of the Peoples Party of Canada, who are almost invisible.
It is specific conservative policies you are opposed to or conservatism generally?
It is the lack of standing for anything. They were silent during COVID. When the NAZI spoke to Parliament, they were happy to applaud. They buy into the Climate Change diversion, while proposing nothing that would actually improve the environment. My own Conservative MP is a rabid war in Ukraine guy, and reflexively supports the Military Industrial Complex, with out asking what does Canada's Security actually look like in 2025. More to the point, they support the globalist agenda, if only by keeping quiet.
Do you see any redeeming value in the Conservative Party? I could counter some (but not all) of your points. However, I am long past the idea that any political party will reflect my worldview in total. I have even distanced myself from the notion that ANY good will come through politics that is not tainted by the various stains of human nature. I do my political duty and pursue other means of cultural change.
I also am aware that there are those among us who take the challenge of getting involved deeper than me. I hope all their success. The challenge, of course, is to fight the inevitability of Lord Acton’s adage “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Tough gig…too tough for most, regardless of their party affiliations.
The cost-of-living crisis, housing crisis, immigration crisis, and opioid crisis all derive from the same cause in all western countries. Globalization, financial dominance, monopolies. If Canada seizes this moment to TRULY divorce itself from the global banks and stock markets, it will soon solve all those problems.
Mark Carney belongs to the bankers and stock traders who are the problem. If he can become a traitor to his caste like FDR, he could do some good. So far I don't see any signs that he wants to break away from the lifetime source of his power and status.
I fail to see how bankers and stock brokers are the problem, given they were the ones who saved Canada in2008, while the rest of the world spiralled downwards.
Coletto is quite right to point out the change in the political zeitgeist since the Trump election. Like the horse returning to its barn even when the damn thing is burning down, many Canadian swing voters I think will - when faced with increasing domestic threats that Coletto identifies as producing a rising sense of precarity over scarcity (especially from all the firm and unyielding changes Trump represents to the progressive mindset) - return to the same Liberal barn (which is the way so many urban voters see 'Canada' as if a synonym to 'Liberal').
Carney is just holding the gate open and the leadership exercise is helping to advertise his presence as the perhaps the better qualified gate keeper-in-waiting to all Canadians. Poilievre isn't much better as he, too, tries to present himself and the Conservatives as better, stronger, more principled gate keepers-in-waiting to this flaming disaster that is now Barn Canada. (But we must always blame Trump for revealing this to us. Bad Orange Man.)
And good luck finding anything unifying across the country other than this mutual anger that we have to face a rapidly changing world starting with precarity, but politically dealt with best, apparently, by doubling down on doing the same things again that set the barn on fire, electing the same parties following the same scripts by the same people, that got us to this very point. Yeah, I'm almost sure that will make all the difference.
Perhaps if more folk better understood the very real connection between sowing and reaping that many rural Canadians seem to understand so much better than their urban counterparts (having to face nature not as we want it to be but as it really is compared to those raised inside urbanized, digitalized, and sanitized social media bubble worlds searching and finding reality-denying political narratives that make us feel better about ourselves, that studiously avoid owning our previous sowing choices over time) more folk today would understand that fighting the damned fire is what matters most. But I'm just not seeing it.
Tildeb, we subscribe to common sources and to common thought. :-) My thinking (at least at the moment) is that Trump is screwing some things up while heading in a constructive and and positive direction. More screw ups to come, for sure, but exciting potential improvements.
I particularly appreciate your comment "the very real connection between sowing and reaping". Canadians continue to have an increasingly passive and assumptive attitude towards government (63% voter turnout in 2021). Such "sowing" has brought us to the reaping of the "potential- takeover-candidate-of-the-year" that we now represent (in Trump's eyes). Massive debt, ineffective military, polarization amongst ourselves, eschewing of natural resources...and Canada as the ONLY BUFFER between the US and Russia. Were I an American, I'd worry about us too!
Please keep commenting. Those other guys were simply wrong.
When one supposedly tilts at windmills for decades as I have done about the very real negative consequences to the country - any liberal democracy - that teaches kids to either invert shared classical liberal values to authoritarian ones (the whole, I-believe-in-free-speech-but... crowd) and/or substitute divisive group affiliated identitarianism in their place (in the name of being 'kind' or 'on the right side of history') it's very frustrating to be proven so right so often about the earned negative consequences we must all face now when there have been so many ways and so many opportunities to alter course from this disastrous decades long path... to see the fire start and to watch it grow.
I've seen and delivered public curriculum at every level of education in Canada in different provinces that by stealth policies is very much intended to indoctrinate students with an anti-classical-liberal ideology that is now coming to fruition. This ideology - exchanging truth for narrative - is SUPPOSED to be divisive! Lo and behold. People - good people, often people who think themselves patriotic - actually clap when the national anthem is altered to 'our home ON native land' as if this demonstrates virtue and some magical path to 'reconciliation' that dispenses with the whole 'truth' aspect. These are the folk who remain oblivious to how this affects an dundermines and dismantles real patriotism, meaning love of country. Who'd-a-thunk turning love of country into a public display of shame and guilt to earn 'virtue' points for a blood-won inheritance might actually prove to be a problem later? What's surprising is how few!
It is also quite informative to have - and LISTEN to - both American and Canadian family members across the continent and on both sides of the rising partisan political divide who explain why they vote this way or that or have just given up. There are substantive reasons often buried under moralistic framing. This kind of framing is counterproductive. And it is SUPPOSED to be! I can appreciate how tiring it may seem to face and vote according to this ongoing losing battle on both sides about addressing common issues that truly matter but are framed by divisive identity politics for short term gain and privilege by those cash in on it. Problems without solutions. A Trump approach discarding this framing is a mighty breath of fresh air for many.
So I pay attention when Vance tells Europeans about what this shifting away from fundamental common values does to alliances very much based on them! Oh my. Who'd-a-thunk such a widening divide might cause division? Well... who wouldn't... at least among those that bother to think rather than just emote? Look at the widening voter gap between choosing political extremes of young German men and women! It's the loss of a common centre that should shock people rather than bicker over which extreme is the more 'moral' choice!
So how does Canada rank in this shifting landscape? Not well. And that's not good if improving relations based on common values between the two countries matter. And I think they do. Greatly. That's what is fast burning down. Once again, I think we've blown it. Adding Canadian tariffs fixes nothing. It only makes the matter worse!
So I marvel at the doubling down - the setting sun of Canada and all it once stood for - by remembering the modern version of today's opiate of the people: keep saying Orange Man Bad and do not buy American! Yuppers, that's sure to fix everything... with the singular exception of anything.
What bothers me is that all of a sudden in many people’s minds, Trump is the problem. The situation he has presented us Canadians with would be less challenging if we hadn’t already weakened ourselves internally. The notion that all the same federal government that got us here ( except the soon to be appointed new PM) is going to extract us from our current woes, seems depressingly silly. But I am concerned that no political party has the depth and talent to navigate us through the precarity. If there are adults among our MPs we need them to step up and show themselves, asap.
I find it amusing when pollsters lump all boomers especially boomer women into one category. I don't know of many boomers who watch the CBC anymore including myself a boomer and woman. If CBC published the number of people actually watching CBC news it would be very telling to see what if any value all the public dollars supporting them is actually delivering. Media in Canada has been decimated by the Liberals and it is now impossible to trust mainstream media.
Carney just another rich elite, celebrity Liberal in the Ottawa bubble who is more concerned with advancing his climate change policies and his resume than fixing the economic stress most Canadians are under. Carny definitely can not empathize with the majority of Canadians who have been and continue to be impacted by the current dismal Canadian economic situation Liberals created over last ten years. The Liberals were done for me a long time ago.
I’m GenX and I find this happens a lot with us too—the generalizations are not helpful. There’s a comedy I was watching that I needed to log on to CBC Gem and I was shocked by how awful even the ads have become. But I think the culprit is not just CBC but all legacy media in Canada.
I too am a boomer who doesn't watch CBC. However, we have friends and family who watch only CBC or CNN. They refuse to consider other sources of information and label it all as misinformation without ever giving it a try. Completely brainwashed and unable to get past the cognitive dissonance. Facts about the dangers of World Globalism etc just bounce off. Hopefully the young people are more open to alternatives to the approved narrative.
Found on Twitter: “Who’s watching? The CBC itself reported that viewers of CBC English television represented only 4.4 percent of the total Canadian audience, and only 2.0 percent tuned in to CBC News Network. By “total Canadian audience,” they mean all Canadians viewing all available TV programming at a given time. So, the CBC’s 2.0 percent “share” is actually far less than 2.0 percent of all Canadians.” —
@davidbclinton
Is that 2% an elite. For sure. Still, the CBC is our media of record. There's nobody else even close.
Tara, this arrived at exactly the right time for me. While I'm appalled at the realization of Trump's aggressiveness towards Canada and his rug-pulling on the Ukraine, I also reject Canada's single-minded hate towards him (and the USA more broadly). The notion of precarity (a word not in my lexicon) is very helpful.
Never have I encountered less rational thinking applied to a situation. It's almost impossible to have an unemotional discussion about Trump (with a Canadian) yet his accomplishments and directions are mostly positive. The "tariffs" are a wall that prevents broader discussion...perhaps like the all-consuming fear of the all-consuming Covid.
My thanks.
It would be good imho if politicians just shut up and let the tariffs come. Whatever. No retaliation. Americans are the ones to protest. You only feed a bully with attention.
I don’t believe this is about scarcity, rather it’s about a country being broken. The systems that governed us, took care of us, educated us, none of these systems work anymore. And why the older folks prefer to embrace a man who’s a liar, corrupted by his own greed, rather than vote for change, is the most distressing and disturbing piece of all.
The boomers and their 12 hr per day CBC news watching , low information lazy asses will decimate this country for their grandchildren.
Ah...deplorables all.
Or MSNBC, believe me it’s even worse.
Interesting perspective. I’m not sure that any questions asked by pollsters are relevant because there are so many Canadians, like myself, that refuse to answer their questions. Why? It is because polls are often turned around by the legacy media to try to influence public opinion. The legacy media have completely lost my trust and I’m not willing to share any information that will be manipulated by them to promote their views. The reality is that there are Canadians who will vote Liberal now that Trudeau has been replaced. There are many other Canadians who have their eyes open and will vote Conservative. Mark Carney may be a different leader but the arrogant and corrupt Liberal political players are all still the same. They have spent the last decade tanking our economy and making Canadians feel like we are not even worthy of having a country. Now we are supposed to believe that these same politicians are patriotic and can save us? This is a crazy idea but there will be some Canadians who buy it. Election results will let us know what is really happening in the hearts and minds of our fellow Canadians, not polls or reports by the media.
Nice to see an illustration this weekend. But I wonder if there might be a Canadian alternative provider, artist. :)