Your Neighbour Canada Has Changed And You're Not Going to Like What is Happening

[Swede]

-snip-
Hello everyone,
What you are about to read is not a story about Canada.

It is a story about America — about what happens when the most important relationship your country has quietly, methodically, and permanently changes. About what it costs when a neighbour you took for granted decides it is done being taken for granted.
Mark Carney has been Canada’s Prime Minister for one year. In that year, he has rearmed his country, rebuilt its alliances, secured its Arctic, reoriented its trade away from the United States, and stood on the world stage at Davos to say — without euphemism, without apology — that the old order is over and America is no longer its anchor.
The United States barely noticed. That is the problem.


https://americanpulse.substack.com/p/special-report-your-neighbour-canada?utm_medium=android&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Freddit.com

[dem4decades]

1. Good for Canada, we're the worse. And don't just blame Trump, the House and Senate too.

The president and congress fucked Canada over, we get what we deserve.

[displacedvermoter]

2. Building their own nuclear weapons, I would imagine,

and well they should. And when they start doing so, will we try to blow up their facilities?

So much is fucked up now...

[Irish_Dem]

3. The US is falling from power, other countries are rising.

The global power structure is shifting as we speak.

Americans don't notice, don't care.

[multigraincracker]

4. Many of us that live in Michigan

would love to be part of Canada.

[Johnny2X2X]

5. I have several friends in Canada

I’ve told some of them not to travel here, it’s not safe.

[Fiendish Thingy]

6. Not completely true, but those efforts are definitely in progress

Carney hasn’t “rearmed” Canada…yet. But he has significantly increased the defense budget, and has taken steps to expand Canadian weapons manufacturing capacity - no more dependence on the US for arms (but it’s going to take a few years). Canada has finally met its NATO obligation of spending 2% of GDP on defence.

As far as securing the Arctic, that too is a work in progress, but Canada and the Scandinavian Arctic nations have been working closely on an allied strategy that does not include the US.

Trade relationships are definitely shifting, and the most exciting part to me is Carney may succeed in creating a partnership/economic alliance between the EU and the Pacific Rim nations, an economic powerhouse that would dwarf the economic power of the US.

Carney has put all these wheels in motion while Trump sleeps and golf’s his way through his second term.

It will be a delicate transition period, but if the nations involved maintain their resolve to see the process through, these “middle powers” will come out the other side much stronger, and no longer dependent on the US for much of anything.

It could also mean a more peaceful, stable world.

It could be the biggest legacy for both Carney and Trump (of course, not from the same perspective)

[DFW]

7. If the Trump disaster had been limited to that first term

It could have been seen as a warning shot, letting both the USA and the rest of the world experience in real time what it meant to let ignorant, greedy fanatics take the country over, even for one presidential term.

But now, it has happened again, and that is (or, at least should be) a solid reason for the world to at best put us on probation for a very long time. Sure, the how and why blame game can be thrashed out for the next half century. Putin, Bernie, Hillary, Biden, Harris, blah blah, BUT----the fact remains that if 40% of the voters in the USA will willingly deliver their votes to a party that lacks competence, compassion, or any trace whatsoever of a conscience or scruples. Sure, there's the issue of available cash for campaigns, and, frankly, at this point, I think a law requiring publicly financed campaigns would be anticipated prior to enactment, and easily circumvented, with any circumvention being sanctioned by the Thomas-Alito court. Yelling about "billionayahs" and "the rich" only glosses over that there are tens of millions of voters who will believe any Monster Goose Rhymes that extremist right sources will throw at them. Things would be a LOT easier/better if we had a "politically neutral media" act, but good luck enforcing that one.

My comments are more to be taken as an observation from here in EU-land than knowledge gleaned from conversations with Canadians. However, I do maintain some old friendships up there, including one of their former ambassadors to the USA, and they seem to have a healthy perception of whether the USA is going through a chronic cough, or if we as a nation have contracted long covid. (Hint--they think it ain't the cough)