Well, the mouldy Cheeto has struck again! A maniacal, enraged little man throwing a tantrum because he cannot stand being told NO.

Monday: 50% tariffs on Canadian wine, dairy, cement, and hockey sticks — yes, hockey sticks. They unearthed a tariff law from 1930 so obscure that it has never actually been used, not even during the Depression, not once in nearly a century. Thursday: mere hours after Carney concluded an emergency meeting with all 13 premiers, the White House struck again. This time, it was a 10% tariff, dressed up as a “forced labour” concern.

What a farce. Canada — forced labour! We pay our workers considerably more than the US federal minimum wage. And every time Bernie Sanders tries to introduce a bill to raise their minimum wage, the Republicans lose their minds. If any country deserves sanctions for “forced labour,” it’s the United States. Sixty countries were affected. We were one of them.

Thirteen Premiers. One Middle Finger.

And here’s the part that should make every single one of us proud: he’s doing this because we REFUSE to bend the knee.

Manitoba’s Wab Kinew said it outright this week — “Trump has united Canada’s leaders by giving them a common opponent.” Thirteen premiers who can't agree on health funding are suddenly standing shoulder to shoulder and calling themselves Team Canada (except Danielle Smith, obviously). Doug Ford got told to put American booze back on Ontario shelves. His answer was no way. BC’s David Eby echoed the same sentiment. Province after province looking south and saying, “Not a chance.”

And it’s not just liquor shelves anymore. The same week the felon-in-chief announced his tariffs, Canada cancelled a joint ribbon-cutting ceremony for the brand-new Gordie Howe International Bridge — a literal symbol of the two countries’ connection. Gone. Scrapped. The federal government didn’t even bother with diplomatic softening: “It would be inappropriate to proceed with a celebratory event between the two countries.” Translation: we’re done pretending this is fine. So yesterday, Canada opened its own multibillion-dollar bridge without a single American in the room. Doug Ford was there. Windsor’s mayor was there. Carney wasn’t even in the province — he skipped it entirely for a national park in Newfoundland. You don’t even rate a phone call anymore. No Americans invited. No apologies issued. Good. It’s about time we stopped being so fucking polite about any of this. And Mango Mussolini had the audacity to publicly WHINE about being “disinvited” — conveniently forgetting he’s the one who made the invitation impossible in the first place.

For 18 months, regular Canadians have been quietly, deliberately starving the USA of our money. Nobody in Ottawa mandated this. No politician told us to do it. We got sick and tired of being threatened with annexation and bullshit tariffs, and decided he doesn’t get our purchases, our grocery money, our road trips, or our friendship. Before making any purchase, I now make it a priority to check if a product is made in Canada or produced by a Canadian company.

And It’s Working

• 91% of Canadians want to rely less on the US — more of us want that than want the relationship repaired
• 8 in 10 still believe the boycott is helping our negotiating position
• Jack Daniel’s parent company says Canadian sales are down more than 60% — their own CEO called it “worse than a tariff”
• 94,148 fewer American cars imported last year, a 12% drop
• Canadian trips to the US down almost 29%

Don't take my word for it. Take Washington's. The White House's own fact sheet admits American alcohol exports to Canada are down 81%, vehicle exports down 22%. That's their own data confirming what we already knew. Not CBC. Not Ottawa. Washington.

That’s what’s actually gotten under his orange-painted skin. Not lawyers. Not trade tribunals. Just ordinary Canadians choosing to stand up to Mango Mussolini by making decisions at our cash registers and with our wallets. Pure dipshittery on his part, brilliance on ours.

We Are Way Past Enough

So Mango throws two tantrums in the same week. Because of course, he did. This is a doddering grifter who has always gotten his way and has never once learned to lose gracefully in his entire entitled, corrupt life.

We didn’t start this fucking fight. We sat through over a dozen rounds of his tariff bullshit with patience most people wouldn’t have managed. That patience has a limit, and every time he tests it, we come back harder, more united, and caring a whole lot less what he or his regime thinks of us.

He wanted us on our knees. Instead, because of him, we’re now the most united country we’ve been in sixty years — and in the same week, he still found the idiocy to blame Canada for the smoke. Not fentanyl. Not terrorists. SMOKE. That’s the absolute insanity we’re dealing with.

So Canada, don’t let up. Don’t quietly slide back to old habits because it’s inconvenient. Every dollar you don’t spend on American garbage is a dollar he can feel missing.

Whenever possible, BUY CANADIAN, BECAUSE IT MATTERS. It’s working; he just admitted it. 🍁

Sources: White House fact sheet on Canadian tariffs • CBC News coverage of the Charlottetown First Ministers Meeting • BNN Bloomberg and CP24/Canadian Press reporting on the premiers’ meeting and Wab Kinew’s remarks • Global News and Chronicle Journal on Doug Ford and the LCBO alcohol ban • Bloomberg, Al Jazeera, and the Detroit News on the Gordie Howe Bridge ceremony cancellation • Forbes and CBC coverage of the forced-labour tariffs on 60 countries • The Globe and Mail on the Canadian boycott’s economic impact • CTV News/Nanos Research polling on boycott support • The Conversation on Canada’s boycott compared to the UK and France • Covington & Burling research on Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930

As I sit here tonight watching the smoke engulf my city, my heart goes out to everyone suffering through the wildfires up north. I know this story’s already all over social media, but I couldn’t resist weighing in — because what’s happening south of the border right now is so petty and so ignorant, it boggles the mind.

Reps. Jack Bergman, John James, Lisa McClain, and John Moolenaar sent Mark Carney a letter this week demanding ACTION on our wildfire smoke drifting south. “We are done accepting apologies in place of action,” they wrote, and Bernie Moreno is apparently drafting a bill to SANCTION Canadian officials over it. And Trump — who couldn’t resist — called it “Willful Negligence” and floated tacking the cost onto tariffs.

I pictured Mark Carney opening the letter. He reads it once. Then again — slower — certain he’s misreading it. Then, I pictured him laughing so hard he fell off his chair, and he’s still on the floor laughing. And, why the fuck not? This might be the single most unhinged thing he’s received from the US all year, and that’s saying everything: he’s running a country that’s currently on fire, and instead of offers of help, he gets an “enough is enough” letter.

As if this idiotic nonsense needed a response, Carney said in one line, “Climate change is everyone’s responsibility — truly everyone’s — including the United States.” One line. No shouting. He let them choke on their own smoke. And somewhere in Ottawa there is a full Liberal cabinet still laughing out loud.

Let’s talk about that help, because these certified morons have somehow forgotten it entirely. When the Palisades Fire tore through LA last January, Quebec scrambled its Super Scooper water bombers south, a deal that’s been running since 1994. B.C.’s Coulson Aviation ran Chinook helicopters through the smoke, dropping water on the Palisades. Alberta sent forty wildland firefighters. Ontario had two more water bombers standing by. Nobody in Canada demanded California explain its forestry policy or blame the Santa Ana winds. We just showed up, because that’s what you do for a neighbour whose house is on fire.

These so-called MAGA Republican lawmakers are the same people who, to this day, call global warming a HOAX — demanding sanctions on us, while a sitting president wants to tariff us for SMOKE. The byproduct of FIRE. Started by LIGHTNING. In a forest 70% of which cannot be reached by road, boat, or a fucking strongly worded letter.

And the numbers? Canada has burned about 1.4 million hectares this season. That’s well below our five-year average and less than a third of what had burned by this point last year. Hey dipshits, this is us having a QUIET fire year!

So here’s the irony: the US is currently at roughly 133% of its own ten-year average for acres burned. They’re having a worse fire year than normal. We’re having a better one than normal. And somehow we’re the ones getting the letter.

TRUMP & MAGA REPUBLICAN IGNORANCE HAVE NO BOTTOM!

John James — currently running for Governor of Michigan — may God help them — posted a campaign graphic demanding Canada “STOP THE SMOKE,” illustrated with an Apache attack helicopter. A fucking Apache attack helicopter! For smoke. A full team of his idiot staffers looked at that graphic and said “ship it,” and not one of them said “sir, do you think this is a good idea?”

Don’t get me wrong, we’re not perfect. But there is a difference between a garden-variety Canadian stupid and whatever the fuck this is. These are gullible, dumb, and somehow even dumber people all stacked on top of each other, holding press conferences and issuing sanction threats for the WINDS. Legislators who cannot distinguish between a forest fire and a foreign policy failure and a phenomenon that predates the United States by about ten thousand years. Maybe if they hadn’t dismantled their own Department of Education, they would have learned something, anything, on forest science and our boreal forests.

Unfuckingbelievable. Where is the compassion for what our firefighters are going through? I keep waiting for the US to find the bottom. I can stop waiting — they don’t have one. 🍁

Sources: The Washington Examiner, reporting on Sen. Bernie Moreno's proposed sanctions legislation and the House Republicans' letter • NOTUS, reporting on Carney's response at a news conference in Ontario and the full congressional letter • The Hill, reporting on the letter's text and signatories • KSBY News, reporting on the Moreno bill announcement and DC-area air quality impacts • National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), for U.S. wildfire acreage and ten-year average figures • Government of Canada wildfire situation reports, for Canadian hectares burned and five-year average figures • Canadian Press and Public Safety Canada news releases, for details on Quebec, B.C., Alberta, and Ontario's assistance during the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires

Since Trump returned to office, there’s been a particular kind of American arrogance that shows up whenever Canada stops doing what it’s told. It shouts. It launches insults, and genuinely looks confused that the rules it changed are now backfiring.

That’s been Hoekstra’s entire year in Ottawa. And it’s been Mark Carney’s entire year NOT TO CARE. Poor Pete, he just doesn’t understand Canadians. Rich, coming from the most self-unaware country on Earth. If I were Mark Carney, I would have thrown the phony out of Canada, on his ass, a long time ago.

THE NUMBERS THE MORON IS MAD ABOUT! 😄

American wine made up 21% of Canada’s wine imports in 2024. In 2025, after the provinces pulled US alcohol off the shelves in response to Trump’s tariffs, that number fell to 5%. Spirits went from 24% to 10%. Beer from 13% to 5%. Meanwhile, imports from everywhere else rose by 9 to 15%.

That’s not a boycott running out of steam. That’s an entire country quietly discovering it never needed the bar it had been drinking at for a hundred years.

And it’s not just the booze — Canadians are buying Made in Canada, or anywhere except the United States. We’re not travelling there either. Tourism to the US has fallen by roughly a third; Canadians are vacationing in Canada, Mexico, and overseas instead. Keep going, Canada!

THE HOEKSTRA CONTRADICTION.

In April, Washington threatened to keep tariffs on Canadian steel, autos, and lumber until Canada dropped the alcohol restrictions. Carney didn’t blink. In May, Hoekstra called the boycott “totally unfair” and “clearly retaliatory.” Boo-fucking-hoo, as if fairness were ever the metric Washington used when it slapped tariffs on its closest ally for the crime of existing next door.

Mid-tantrum, he admitted something that guts his own government’s position: ending the boycott wouldn’t get Canada anything back. “We’re not negotiating tariffs on alcohol bans,” he said. So the ask was never strategic. It was Washington wanting the boycotts to stop without changing anything that provoked it — the diplomatic equivalent of a man who slaps you hard and demands you stop looking outraged.

Carney’s answer, consistently, has been NO.

THE JULY 4TH REVOLTING FLEX.

At Hoekstra’s own “Independence Day garden party” in Ottawa — with convicted convoy organizer Tamara Lich in attendance — he had F-35s flying over the champagne and canapés and a fresh line about expecting the booze bans lifted “next year.” All the while, still STONEWALLING on opening the Gordie Howe Bridge, a $6.4 billion project Canada built and paid for outright. Days later, he admitted that fourteen months of talks had led to nothing. That’s not diplomacy. That’s a man whose entire political identity is defined by his relentless bootlicking of Dear Leader.

Let’s be honest about what he is. Not a policymaker. Not an architect of American strategy for Canada. He’s just a mouthpiece, a useful idiot handed a podium and a Twitter account to mindlessly echo everything Trump wants. He’s the guy sent to do the yelling so the felon-in-chief doesn’t have to.

GIVE ME A BREAK. THIS IS BIGGER THAN A LIQUOR AISLE.

Here’s what fourteen months of this circus has taught us: the United States, under this regime, is no longer a reliable anything. Not a trading partner, not an ally, not a neighbour that respects a border it’s spent a year fantasizing about erasing. It’s just a bully with an economy attached, and Hoekstra is the guy they’ve sent to complain that we stopped answering the door.

Hoekstra’s not the only human liability Trump recycled to Canada. Kristi Noem — who bragged in her own book about shooting her family’s puppy, who ran Homeland Security like a personal cage-and-cattle operation while ICE agents gunned down American citizens on American soil. She got fired for being too much of a humiliation, even for Trump. So they sent her into the boardroom of a tiny Vancouver mining company to help lock down our critical minerals. A puppy killer and a jailer, looking for copper.

We will never be the 51st state of what I consider one of the most corrupt democracies on the planet right now. Never. Not for a trade deal, not for tariff relief, not for a bridge, not for anything Washington is offering, because Washington is offering NOTHING — it’s demanding gratitude for the illegal tariffs it imposed on us, unprovoked.

And Poilievre — here’s what should embarrass him into silence, if he had a spine and an ounce of shame left. Carney spent a year refusing to hand Washington a single concession without something real in return. Poilievre stood at the Economic Club in February and blamed Canadians for our own hostage-taking, calling Carney’s diversification into Asia and Europe a “permanent rupture” we couldn’t afford. In March he told Bloomberg, straight-faced, that we should be deepening ties with Washington, not distancing from it. So while Trump floats annexation like a punchline he can’t let go of, Poilievre’s instinct is to get back in the room faster and GROVEL HARDER. This is where we’d be if PP had won. Bend the knee to the mighty USA. I thank every Canadian voter who refused to hand power to this pathetic sellout, and helped us avoid a disaster.

MOST Canadians, coast to coast, don’t want to be any part of the United States. We’ve learned we can build our own bar, buy our own wine, ship our own oil elsewhere, and survive fine without a partner who insults us on the way out — and dumps its rejects on our doorstep while it’s at it. That’s not anti-Americanism. That’s Canadian dignity.

Trump and his goons can go test the structural integrity of our beautiful bridge — and jump; the longer the drop, the better. 🍁

Sources: CBC News • Radio-Canada • CTV News • The Conversation • Bloomberg • Statistics Canada • U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Feb. 2026.

ONE OF THEM FELL ASLEEP. I don’t say that as a cheap shot. I say it because it’s the single most VIRAL image of Trump to come out of two days in Ankara. They called Biden "Sleepy Joe" — compared to "Dozy Don," Joe Biden was Mick Jagger!

Somewhere between bullshitting that Greenland is “surrounded by China’s ships and Russian ships,” calling Spain a terrible partner, and threatening to yank troops over a Danish territory that was never his to take, the President of the United States sat across from one of his favourite dictators, Erdoğan, and just... drifted off. Eyes closing, head dropping — the only way it could have been better is if he'd been drooling. The whole indignity played out on camera, and nearly a million people had seen it by morning. Eighty years old, the so-called leader of the free world, running on fumes and grievance in equal measure.

Meanwhile, Mark Carney was quietly signing paperwork that will matter for the next thirty years. This is not a new pattern. We watched the exact same split-screen play out at the G7 in Évian.

Let’s be clear-eyed about something first: CUSMA didn’t go the way any of us wanted, and we are still tied, hip to hip, to a country whose president can’t sit upright through a bilateral. Carney knows exactly how volatile that man is — probably better than any of us. It would be so easy, so satisfying, to say what more than half this country is thinking, out loud — why don’t you just resign, you unfit, corrupt asshole. But Carney doesn’t. And I’ve stopped mistaking that restraint for weakness. It’s arithmetic. You don’t get anything from a deranged, erratic man by handing him a grievance to chew on. You get things by out-playing and out-working him.

This is what Carney did for Canada in Ankara:

• He announced that Canada hit NATO’s 2% defence spending target for the first time in our history, with a clear runway to 5% by 2035.

• Signed the largest defence procurement in Canadian history — a submarine fleet with Germany and Norway — days before he even landed, then walked it into the summit as delivered proof, not a promise.

• Locked in Kongsberg joint-strike missiles for our future F-35s.

• Opened negotiations to join NATO’s Innovation Sub-Fund.

• Agreed to host the 2027 NATO Industry Forum.

• Extended our troop commitment in Latvia to 2031 and our training mission in Ukraine to 2029.

• Launched talks toward a full Canada-Germany Strategic Partnership Agreement.

• Managed South Korea’s disappointment over the lost submarine bid in the same breath — pivoting straight into AI and tech cooperation instead of letting the relationship rot.

And he did it while personally sitting down with fifteen separate heads of state and government in two days: Ukraine, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, the UK, Finland, Hungary, Iceland, Sweden, Latvia, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Romania — and, yes, even Turkey. Fifteen rooms, fifteen agendas, zero naps. Turns out you can stay awake through a bilateral if you actually care what’s being said in it.

Carney even said Trump “won the argument” on burden-sharing — I’m sure the Canadian noise machine is already spreading its fallacious commentary. You know what I would have said, and it wouldn’t have been that Trump won on anything. But that’s Carney’s tell, not a concession. Carney isn’t interested in being right or belligerent in public. He’s interested in outcomes for Canada: meeting its obligations, deepening its European ties, hedging every bet against one deeply unstable ally, all without ever making Trump the villain of the story in front of cameras. Let Dozy Don think he won the argument. Canada walked away with the submarines.

Eighteen months ago, this man was a central banker. Not a career politician, not a campaigner, just a man who spent his working life managing every crisis with steady, deliberate calm. Watching him now — unbothered, room after room, with fifteen heads of state, refusing every bait no matter how loudly it’s dangled — this isn’t a politician who picked up statecraft along the way. This is a central banker who simply found a bigger balance sheet to manage. Same discipline. Same calculated nerve. Different building. And somewhere in Ankara, the other guy is still trying to remember which line he’s supposed to stand on.

Trump generated headlines by tantrum. Carney generated them by receipt. One man spent two days performing strength. The other spent two days building it, one signature at a time. 🍁

Sources: "NATO leaders promise billions in spending as Canada talks up submarine deal," The Canadian Press • "Trump has 'won the argument' on NATO defence spending, Carney says at summit," The Globe and Mail • "ANALYSIS | NATO heads to Turkey hoping to avoid a Trump blow-up," CBC News • "Fact check: Five false claims Trump made in one meeting with Erdogan," CTV News • "Trump sparks health concerns as he appears to 'wander off' and fall asleep at NATO summit," Irish Star • "Donald Trump branded an 'embarrassment' as he 'falls asleep' in meeting with Erdogan in Turkey," Irish Star • "Wandering Trump, 80, Guided by Frail Turkish Despot Recep Erdoğan, 72, at NATO Arrival Ceremony," The Daily Beast • "'Cost of drama is too high,' expert says as NATO leaders meet in Turkey," Global News • NATO Secretary General previews the Ankara Summit, highlights progress on defence spending, NATO.int

I went looking for a straight answer on CUSMA this week and found a Canadian internet split into two warring camps; each is absolutely certain they are correct.

CAMP ONE: is in full meltdown. WTAF is Carney doing? Mexico’s at the table. Why isn’t Canada? July 1st is days away, and our Prime Minister looks like he’s asleep at the switch while the country goes off a cliff.

And how unsurprising that Pierre Poilievre is leading Camp One’s meltdown. He’s not opposing — he’s campaigning. He never stopped. Every time CUSMA comes up, it’s the same script: “losing, losing,” mocking Carney’s YouTube videos, demanding to know Canada’s “leverage” like he’s entitled to classified negotiating strategy. He isn’t — Poilievre still refuses the top-secret security clearance every other opposition leader holds, so he has no legal right to the information he’s demanding. This isn’t opposition. It’s not even strategy. It’s PP slogans standing in for substance: half-truths, pretend outrage, and just enough misinformation to make some Canadians doubt their own government, especially now, given what we’re up against.

His version of “fixing” this? Cave faster, give up more, get a deal sooner so he can claim a win and appease a White House that doesn’t respect weakness in the first place. That’s not strength. That’s surrender dressed up as urgency — exactly the rushed, lopsided outcome Carney has spent a year refusing to be a part of.

CAMP TWO: knows July 1st is NOT a deadline; it’s a manufactured panic point. Washington has no real authority to cancel anything that fast. Of course Carney knows this. He’s playing chess while everyone else is having a seizure over checkers. So all the bullshit fabricators, the CPC mouthpieces, and especially PP, need to put down their phones and take a breath.

Which camp is right? At this point, with the bozos running Washington, who fucking knows? But the mechanics here are more interesting than either side’s talking points.

WHAT JULY 1ST ACTUALLY IS

Buried in CUSMA is Article 34.7, what trade lawyers call the “sunset clause.” Six years after the deal took effect, which brings us to July 1, 2026, the three governments have to formally declare, in writing, whether they want to extend the agreement another
16 years, locking it in until 2042. Canada’s chief negotiator, Janice Charette, put it
as plainly as a government official ever puts anything: it’s a CHECKPOINT, NOT
A CLIFF.

If the three countries don’t agree to extend, CUSMA doesn’t expire, get cancelled, or vanish. It just keeps going under annual reviews instead of the 16-year lock-in until it hits its original expiry date in 2036.

WHAT IF TRUMP ACTUALLY PULLS THE TRIGGER

There’s a separate, bigger lever in the same treaty: any country can walk away, but must give “six months’ written notice” first. So what happens if Trump is stupid enough to actually file that notice? And we all know he’s stupid enough. Three things, none of them simple:

1. It isn’t instant. Six months, written, no shortcuts. The U.S. Senate’s own Finance Committee concluded the country can’t legally withdraw from a congressionally approved trade deal without Congress’s consent, and American customs law would need to change to even make a withdrawal function — a long, drawn-out legal fight. And given his record — executive order after executive order struck down, plus TACO — backing down under pressure is the rule, not the exception. Meanwhile, CUSMA would continue.

2. It isn’t smart. Canada is America’s biggest single customer for its own exports, full stop — out-buying every other country on earth. Most U.S. states sell more to Canada than anywhere else. Walking away would blow a hole in the economy he’s supposedly protecting. Polls have him anywhere from the mid-30s down to the high-20s, and on the economy specifically, roughly only 1 in 4 Americans approve — with midterms five months away. Even his own manufacturers call CUSMA one of his signature first-term wins and are lobbying to keep it, not blow it up. He’d be detonating his own country; unfortunately, I don’t think he gives a shit about this.

3. It isn’t well-defined. Nobody knows exactly what a withdrawal would look like, because it’s never happened. That’s the real risk — not the July 1st checkpoint, but this six-month clock, if Trump is asinine enough to actually start it. Even then, he’d be igniting a fire under his own economy as much as ours, possibly even more so.

Underneath all of that, CUSMA doesn’t disappear for Canada and Mexico. The agreement stays in force between whoever’s left — Canada and Mexico would still have a trade deal with each other, intact, the day after. Canada-Mexico trade hit roughly $62 billion CAD in 2025, a relationship the two countries have spent the past year actively building, thanks to our PM. During Carney’s visit to Mexico, Sheinbaum publicly framed the two countries as forming a “common front” in CUSMA talks.

SO WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE US

July 1st will pass. CUSMA will not collapse on that day, no matter what Trump posts on Truth Social in the middle of the night. The treaty’s machinery protects against exactly the cliff-edge collapse driving the panic, and the legal and economic reality on the U.S. side gives Trump every reason not to test it.

Carney has been doing the hard, unglamorous work because he knows exactly what he’s dealing with in Washington. He has spent a year building Canada’s leverage in places Trump can’t tariff away, including with Mexico — new trade missions, new partners, new options.

He’s negotiating like a man who’s already gamed out every scenario in advance. He’s not panicking — he’s building new bridges. That’s the view from the EDGE — Carney’s not looking away, and neither are we.

Sources: CBC News, “July 1 date for CUSMA review a ‘checkpoint... not a cliff,’ Canada’s chief negotiator says” • CBC News, “Trump is unlikely to rip up CUSMA, his trade deal with Canada and Mexico. Here’s why” • CBC News, “Trump wants CUSMA to expire ‘immediately.’ Here’s the reality behind his takes on the trade deal” • CBC News, “Mexico, Canada have formed a common front on CUSMA talks, says Sheinbaum” • CBC News, “Poilievre says Carney has been ‘losing, losing, losing’ on U.S. trade war” • The Globe and Mail, “Prime Minister should explain Canada’s ‘leverage’ in U.S. trade talks, Poilievre says” • MLT Aikins, “CUSMA’s 2026 joint review: What employers need to know about cross-border mobility” • Global Affairs Canada, “Article 34.7: Review and Term Extension,” CUSMA Chapter 34 • U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, 2020 report on congressional authority over trade agreement withdrawal • U.S. International Trade Commission / Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, data on Canada as top export destination for U.S. states • National Association of Manufacturers, public statements on CUSMA renewal • Real Clear Politics / Silver Bulletin, aggregated Trump approval rating data, June 2026 • AP-NORC and NPR/PBS Marist polling, Trump approval and economic approval,
June 2026

I want to write this open letter to you. Not as a stranger, but as a friend and neighbor for my entire life. And mostly because last Thursday, June 18th, I watched you become two different countries in the span of a few hours.

I watched the opening ceremony of the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park, South Side Chicago, that I can only describe as a resurrection. Stevie Wonder. John Legend. Bruce Springsteen. Four living presidents and their wives. President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, still standing as gracefully as they did the day they left the White House — and a crowd that came not to gawk, but to remember what it felt like to believe in something again.

I cried through so much of it. I am not ashamed to admit it.

I will say this part first, because that’s what the Obamas did, and it was the most powerful choice of the day. Neither of them said his name. Not once. They didn’t have to — everyone in that crowd, everyone watching at home, knew exactly who Michelle Obama meant by a country sliding down a slope with no telling where it stops, or who Barack Obama meant by leaders who see some people as more equal than others, who treat government as a way to divvy up the spoils and punish enemies. They wouldn’t give him the dignity of being named. So I won’t either.

Barack Obama also admitted, with more honesty than most politicians manage in a lifetime, that he isn’t immune to anger or doubt himself. I’ve spent the past 18 months furious — genuinely, sometimes corrosively — at the corrupt fuck currently occupying your highest office. Watching two people who actually held that office refuse to even speak his name told me more than any speech could have.

What I want to talk about is what's been lost in the years between then and now.

I’m Canadian. I have to tell you something my own country doesn’t always say out loud: I have always thought Canada was the better place for me to live. We’re not the perfect postcard you sometimes mistake us for — our own history with race is its own unresolved wound. But you were never my home. You were my neighbor I was grateful to have, the one the world looked at, even when it resented you, because underneath the resentment was always a half-hearted hope that you’d eventually do the right thing — because you so often did.

One of those times, you elected a Black man with a name nobody could pronounce, raised by a single mother and grandparents who didn’t have much, and put him in the most powerful office on earth — twice. I remember exactly what that felt like from across the border. Watching a neighbor do something genuinely brave, something I wasn’t sure they had in them. I remember feeling so proud of you. That’s not nostalgia. That’s memory, and memory is allowed to ache.

Michelle Obama stood on that stage and told the crowd not to be nostalgic for them — that this center wasn’t built to make people sigh and say “oh, we miss you, Barack,” but a reminder of what’s still possible by all of you, not just by the two of them.

I heard them. I understood exactly what they were saying. I sat in my living room, an eight-hour drive from where they stood, and I grieved for you, the way you grieve a friend who is still alive but isn’t who they used to be. I grieved for the America that elected Obama and for the version the whole world believed in — right up until you elected “him” again.

I am not angry at the Americans who didn't vote for him, who know exactly what's been lost and are living with it every single day. I am not interested in hating you, America. I have never been interested in that. Watching your musicians, your former president, and your former first lady — who have never once stopped being more dignified than the moment required — I remembered what it felt like to believe you could do anything if you got your hope back and decided, together, to use it.

They opened the center to the public the next day. Juneteenth. A day dedicated to you finally, formally admitting that not everyone in your country had always been free. You have your own unresolved open wounds on race too. This date was not a coincidence — it was the Obamas’ choice. The same way Michelle Obama said hope is a choice. Voting is a choice. Being a decent human being is a choice. So, Happy Belated Juneteenth, neighbor.

I don’t know what comes next for you. Nobody seems to. But like the Obamas, I’m not ready to give up on you either. I just wanted you to know that for a few hours one morning in June, an old friend across the border sat and cried, openly and without apology, for everything we’ve lost together — and let herself hope, just a little, that we might get some of it back.

With love, and with hope I’m not ready to let go of,

Your neighbor to the north. 🍁

The G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, France, wrapped up on June 17th. Three days. Seven leaders. One table. And for anyone paying attention, the contrast between Canada’s Prime Minister and the current occupant of the Oval Office was so stark, it almost felt like satire.

MARK CARNEY ARRIVED AT THE G7 WITH A LIST.

He left with everything on it:

• New sanctions targeting all assets of the Russian war machine • A G7 declaration naming Canada a future global energy supplier — reducing the world’s dependence on the Strait of Hormuz • Five billion dollars in critical minerals investment deals • A new defence intelligence pact with France • Agreements to equip the Canadian Armed Forces • Seven or eight conversations with Donald Trump — despite no official bilateral meeting on the books

He met with Zelenskyy and stood firm on Ukraine. He met with Modi, moving Canada and India closer to a trade agreement ahead of the G20. He secured agreements to purchase military jets from Italy.

And then there was the hot mic moment. Carney was caught on a live microphone explaining Canada’s Chinese EV deal to Trump — slowly, with hand gestures. Like a kindergarten teacher explaining sharing. Trump’s response? “That’s good. I like it.” Of course, this is Trump — like that 4-year-old who nods along with the teacher and then goes back to being a bully the next day. Canada is under no illusions. But in that moment, on that hot mic, in front of the world? Carney, as usual, was absofuckinglutely the adult.

He gave Trump a birthday present. Trump “likes it a lot.” The gift was never revealed — and honestly, knowing Trump, it better have been gold-plated or stuffed with cash. Otherwise it’s going straight to the back of a closet in the White House, never to be seen again.

And when Trump complained he had the lowest chair in the room, Carney got up, gave Trump his own chair and sat back down without missing a beat. Trump said: “Thank you Mark, I’ll remember that.” HE WON’T. This is a man who couldn’t remember which direction to walk at the same summit. But I guess, for Trump, that practically qualified as a diplomatic breakthrough.

Carney left Évian having secured Canada’s place on the world stage again, and in language that would have seemed ambitious a year ago: “In an uncertain world, Canada is a pivotal, powerful, and purposeful force for good.”

AND THEN THERE WAS THE OTHER GUY. TRUMP.

Donald Trump arrived at the G7 like a man who had never been to a G7. Late to a session, he waddled off in the wrong direction until a staffer redirected him, stopped at the head of the table where everyone else was already seated, and announced: “I’m the boss.” Then complained about his chair. The other leaders smiled the way you smile at an elderly uncle with dementia who’s had one too many at Thanksgiving.

On the final day, he took to the podium for what was supposed to be a press conference — Rubio and Lutnick standing behind him — and proceeded to ramble for over forty minutes in what reporters charitably described as “incoherent word salad and cognitive confusion.” One political editor called it “one of the most erratic press conferences I’ve ever seen.” Even with an orange bronzer plaster on his face, he looked visibly unwell.

Then — approximately twenty minutes in — came the “Fart Heard Around the World.” Audible. On camera. I watched it. I heard it. Rubio and Lutnick stood frozen behind him, staring into the distance like two men questioning every career decision that led them to this exact moment. If I didn’t think they’d deserved every second of that humiliation, I might have felt sorry for them. Instead, I was on the floor laughing my ass off.

As if the nonsense needed any more absurdity, a fly landed on his head. It stayed there a full minute. Even the fly eventually thought better of it and left. Make of that what you will.

This is the man who’s supposed to be leading the free world. He couldn’t find his chair. He couldn’t find his direction. And at the family photo, he couldn’t find a single leader who wanted to stand next to him.

THEN TRUMP WENT TO VERSAILLES.

Trump didn’t fly home after the G7 concluded. He went to Versailles. For dinner.
With Macron.

He couldn’t resist all that gold. “Versailles is not gold leaf. Versailles is the real deal,” he said with glee. That’s quite the review coming from a man who modelled Mar-a-Lago after this exact palace. A man who’s been caught personally supergluing spray-painted Home Depot mouldings all over the Oval.

And there, under all that actual gold, Trump signed his so-called “deal” with Iran. Versailles — the exact palace where Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles, its unconditional surrender, in 1919. And in 2026, in that same room, Trump signed a surrender of his own. Not Iran’s surrender. America’s.

Some are already calling it “the greatest diplomatic troll of all time.” Macron got the so-called most powerful man on earth to sign his own surrender in the one palace on the planet built for it.

Rubio’s face told the real story all week. At the podium, mortified. And at Versailles, looking down at Trump signing America’s surrender — you can practically hear him thinking: What in the actual fuck are you doing?

PRICELESS. 🍁

Sources: Prime Minister of Canada / pm.gc.ca, "Prime Minister Carney secures new partnerships in defence and critical minerals at the 2026 G7 Leaders' Summit," June 17, 2026 • Newsweek, "Donald Trump says 'I'm the boss' to G7 leaders," June 2026 • AlterNet/Raw Story, coverage of Trump's G7 press conference, June 17, 2026 • The Mirror/AOL, "Donald Trump embarrassed by a fly live on-air," June 2026 • CNN Politics, "Dinner at Versailles, alpine air and an Iran agreement," June 2026 • The National, "From world war diplomacy to US-Iran deal: why Versailles matters," June 18, 2026 • Ynetnews, "Trump's Treaty of Versailles: Iran MOU signed at historic palace," June 2026.

While Western media has been consumed by G7 optics and Iran deal speculation, something extraordinary has been unfolding on the ground in Ukraine. Russia is not winning this war. Russia is collapsing under the weight of it.

The numbers tell a story Moscow desperately wants buried. Russia’s rate of advance has fallen from nearly 10 square kilometres per day in early 2025 to under 3 square kilometres per day in 2026. That’s not a slowdown. That’s a war machine running out of road. In a single four-week period ending June 3rd, Russian forces suffered a net loss of 93 square miles of Ukrainian territory.

But the real story isn’t just territory. It’s what Ukraine is doing to Russia’s ability to fight at all.

Ukraine has systematically targeted Russia’s fuel supply — not just at the front, but deep inside Russia itself. In May alone, Ukraine struck eight of Russia’s ten largest refineries. Fuel shortages have now spread across more than 25 Russian regions — including Moscow and St. Petersburg. On June 3rd, Ukrainian drones struck the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal on the opening day of Putin’s own International Economic Forum — sending black smoke billowing over his home city while foreign dignitaries arrived for his vanity showcase. The strongman. The genius of the Kremlin. Couldn’t even protect his own backyard. A former UK Defence Attaché called it “exceptionally humiliating.” I call it justice. Fuck yes!

Photo: Ukrainian drones attacked the Moscow Oil Refinery for the second time this week on the morning of June 18. (Exilenova+ / Telegram)

And then there’s Crimea. Ukraine’s stated strategy is to isolate Crimea entirely — and it’s working. Russian military cargo traffic along the main highway into the peninsula has dropped 71% in two weeks. Fuel rationing in occupied Crimea is now capped at 20 litres per week — down from 20 litres per day just weeks ago. Russian troops on the peninsula are cut off. No fuel. No resupply. No way out.

Ukraine came to this war being told it couldn’t win. That it should negotiate. That it should accept the reality of Russian power. Turns out Ukraine had cards after all. Big ones.

CANADA IS IN THE FIGHT

At CANSEC, Canada’s leading defence and security event, the Department of National Defence and Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence signed an arrangement to manufacture Ukrainian drone systems in Canada. The partnership, called Airlogix-Sentinel, brings together Ukrainian defence technology company Airlogix and Hamilton-based Canadian drone maker Sentinel Research and Development. These aren’t symbolic gestures. These are weapons being built on Canadian soil, destined for Ukrainian front lines — and the cutting-edge Ukrainian drone technology behind them will now live here, in Canada’s own defence arsenal.

RUSSIA NOTICED. Moscow’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova threatened to publish the address of the Hamilton company involved, arguing the deal allows Ukraine to hide vital military supplies in a third country — and accusing Canada of behaving like “a warmonger.”

WHATEVER. This is a country that took Iranian-made drones and used them to rain death on Ukrainian civilians. A country that sent North Korean soldiers (North Korea, for fuck’s sake) — up to 15,000 of them — to fight its war because it was running out of its own. A country propped up by the most sanctioned regimes on earth. A country that, just a few days ago, struck the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra — an 11th-century monastery, one of the oldest Christian sites in the world. France’s foreign minister called it the equivalent of bombing Notre Dame. And they want to call Canada a warmonger? The audacity is almost impressive.

President Zelenskyy surveys the damage at the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra — an 11th-century monastery complex struck by Russian drones on June 15, 2026. Zelenskyy called it Moscow's "biggest crime yet against Christian culture."

Sentinel’s CEO Katheron Intson didn’t flinch. “We take all threats to our security seriously,” she said. Then added: “The production facility tied to the Ukraine partnership has not yet been established. So if they find our address before we do,
that will be very interesting.”

That’s a Canadian woman running a defence company telling the Kremlin to go
fuck itself. Nicely.

And our PM Mark Carney: He stood beside Zelenskyy at the G7 in Évian and announced new sanctions targeting 162 individuals, entities, and vessels — all assets of the Russian war machine — and said plainly: “We’re working more closely on the production of drones together, and we’ll discuss the next stage of that.”

There’s a reason the world is watching Canada right now. It’s not because we’re the biggest. Not because we’re the loudest. But because when a war criminal threatens our country, our defence minister says, “we will not be intimidated.” When a superpower calls us a “warmonger” for helping a sovereign nation defend itself, our Prime Minister shows up and announces more sanctions, more drones, more support. And when Ukraine needs allies who mean what they say — Canada means what it says.

This is what real leadership looks like. Not a bully. Not a coward. Not a puppet of a wannabe tsar in Moscow or his enablers in Washington. A Prime Minister who stands beside Zelenskyy and says: the “next stage” is ramping up.

Bold, confident, and kind. That’s the Canadian way.

Canada will not be bullied. Not by Putin. Not by his flunkies in Washington. Not
by anyone.

SLAVA UKRAINI! 🇺🇦 🇨🇦

Sources: Institute for the Study of War / Russia Matters, territorial analysis, June 2026. • Al Jazeera, Russia's rate of advance, May 2026. • Euronews, Crimea supply line disruption, June 12, 2026. • Kyiv Independent, St. Petersburg Oil Terminal strike, June 3, 2026. • Euromaidan Press, Russian fuel shortages, Moscow and St. Petersburg, June 16, 2026. • Canada.ca / Department of National Defence, Airlogix-Sentinel drone arrangement, May 29, 2026. • CBC News, Sentinel CEO response to Russian threats, June 11, 2026. • CP24 / CBC News, Russia "warmonger" accusation, June 10, 2026. • The Canadian Press / CBC News, Carney at G7, Zelenskyy meeting, sanctions, June 16, 2026. • ISW / Yahoo News, North Korean troops in Russia. • Carnegie Endowment / ISW, Iranian drones supplied to Russia. • PBS NewsHour, Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra strike, June 15, 2026.

Before Mark Carney walked into the G7 summit in Évian, he spent six days in Europe doing something that got remarkably little analytical attention in the Canadian press: constructing the architecture of a post-American trade strategy, one bilateral at a time.

This is what that looked like.

Paris First

On June 12th, Carney sat down with Emmanuel Macron at the Palais de l’Élysée — their seventh one-on-one meeting since winning his mandate in April 2025. Not the seventh meeting overall. Seventh bilateral. That’s a working relationship, not a courtesy call.

What came out of Paris was concrete. Canada and France signed a new General Security of Information Agreement — a formal intelligence-sharing pact covering defence, space, AI, and aerospace. Classified information, shared between allies, creating procurement opportunities for Canadian industry in the French defence sector. They deepened cooperation on critical minerals, clean energy, and advanced technology. France also purchased two additional DHC-515 water bombers built in Calgary by De Havilland Canada — Canadian aerospace, now embedded in the French supply chain.

Each of the seven bilaterals has added a layer. Canada and France had $15.2 billion in bilateral trade in 2025. That number is growing by design.

Then Dublin

The following day, Carney flew to Ireland for the inaugural De Chastelain Public Lecture at Trinity College Dublin — named for the Canadian general whose work helped broker the Good Friday Agreement. The room included Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Irish academics, and diplomats. It was not a press event. It was a deliberate address to a room that understood the difference between performance and power.

There’s a reason Carney chose Ireland, and it goes beyond the fact that his family roots are in Iraland’s County Mayo. Ireland and Canada share something that doesn’t get said plainly enough: both nations have spent their modern history managing an existential economic relationship with a much larger, often overbearing neighbour that has periodically treated sovereignty as a negotiating chip. The Irish know what it costs to be the smaller nation next door. They’ve been living it for centuries. They didn’t need the concept explained.

The Rupture, Named Plainly

What Carney laid out at Trinity was not a wish list. It was a diagnosis.

“Ireland and Canada are navigating a global rupture, not a quiet transition.” The post-Cold War rules-based order is breaking down. Multilateral institutions have weakened. Economic integration — the system that built the modern world — is being weaponized.

That is the Prime Minister of Canada, on Irish soil, saying out loud what our corporate media spends considerable energy softening into “uncertainty” and “headwinds.”

He went further. Conflicts are no longer just kinetic — they are economic, social, and technological. Canada, Ireland, and Europe are “increasingly and immediately vulnerable to once-distant threats.” The word immediately is doing serious work in that sentence.

Why the Timing Matters

On July 1st — two weeks from the day Carney spoke — Ireland takes over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, giving Dublin effective control of the EU’s legislative agenda for six months. Carney was not simply visiting an ally. He was engaging the nation about to hold the steering wheel of the European economy, twenty-four hours before sitting across from Donald Trump at the G7 table.

That is sequencing. Deliberate, precise sequencing.

What Was Actually Announced

Carney and Taoiseach Martin elevated the bilateral relationship with a new joint statement covering science, technology, culture, and trade. An Irish government analysis projects that deeper cooperation across thirteen sectors — pharmaceuticals, AI, finance, food security, air transport — could add $2 billion a year in bilateral trade. To be precise: that’s a projection backed by sectoral analysis, not a signed contract. But it builds on a relationship that has already grown 150% in a decade and now stands at $6 billion annually.

Reliability Is Not a Podium

When a reporter asked whether the Trump administration was a reliable trading partner, Carney didn’t say his name. He redefined the question entirely.

“You have to know what you want, what you need, how you serve your citizens — and then go out and get it.”

Reliability is not measured by what someone says at a podium — it is measured by who shows up to do the hard structural work when things get difficult. That line was not aimed at the reporter. It was aimed at the room — and the room that would read about it the next morning.

The Longer Arc

Paris and Dublin weren’t a six-day trip. They were the visible surface of fifteen months of deliberate work. Since winning his mandate in April 2025, Carney has built more than twenty economic and security partnerships. Canada now has trade agreements spanning 51 countries, covering two-thirds of global GDP, and is on track to double that market access this year.

Canada walked into the G7 in Évian not as a nation managing its relationship with Washington. It walked in as a nation that has spent over a year constructing an alternative — across Europe, the Gulf states, Asia, and the developing world.

The world is fracturing along too many fault lines. Canada has been building in the gaps. Paris and Dublin were just the latest receipts. 🍁

Sources: Prime Minister of Canada (Trinity College speech transcript, Paris readout, June 2026); CBC News; Global News; Globe and Mail; RTÉ; Al Jazeera; Irish Government Presidency of the Council of the EU

On May 31, Pierre Poilievre sent a formal letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney. He called it a "full-blown recession." He said Carney had delivered "the only recession in the G7." He demanded an emergency parliamentary debate.

He wasn't alone. Deputy leader Melissa Lantsman and House leader Andrew Scheer co-sponsored a parliamentary motion calling on the House to recognize that Carney had given Canada "the only economy in recession in the G7." The entire Conservative front bench signed on. This wasn't one politician's hot take — it was a coordinated campaign.

They weren't the only ones. The Fraser Institute had already warmed up the crowd, publishing a piece in December titled "Dark clouds loom over Canada's economy in 2026." What Canadians should know: this so-called think tank receives hundreds of thousands of dollars in documented funding from U.S. oil billionaires. It is where the CPC gets its economic talking points. Foreign-funded pessimism, laundered through a mouthpiece, aimed straight at Canadian confidence.

They were loud. They were certain. They were coordinated.

Four days after Poilievre's letter, Statistics Canada released the May jobs report.

Canada added 88,000 jobs. The unemployment rate dropped from 6.9% to 6.6%. Full-time employment — not part-time, not contract, not three-jobs-to-pay-rent — jumped by 154,000 positions, reversing nearly all of the full-time losses from the
first four months of the year. The May gain was the strongest single month of job creation since December 2024, and it landed eight times higher than what economists had forecast.

WHERE IS THE CORRECTION?

Where is Poilievre’s letter acknowledging any of this? Where is Lantsman’s statement? Scheer’s? Where is the emergency debate on the fact that the jobs came back? Crickets.

This is how their playbook works. You scream the bad news at maximum volume. When the numbers shift, you say nothing. You move to the next attack. And hope nobody notices the gap between the prediction and the reality. I've noticed.

Here's what the data actually shows. Yes, Canada posted two consecutive quarters of GDP contraction — a Q4 decline and a flat Q1. That technically meets one definition of a recession. But the Bank of Canada's senior deputy governor told MPs directly not to put too much weight on one indicator, especially with this much "noise" in the data. Economists on Bay Street largely concluded the numbers don't amount to a real recession. And more importantly, Statistics Canada's early estimate for April already showed a 0.4% monthly GDP rebound — before the May jobs surge even registers.

The Spring Economic Update put it plainly: Canada avoided the recession many had predicted. Canada's growth in 2025 was second highest in the G7.

This doesn't mean everything is fine. It isn't. Trade uncertainty is real. CUSMA renegotiation starts this summer; nobody should be relaxed about what comes out of Washington and a bunch of fascists who want to own Canada. Business investment has contracted for five consecutive quarters. The economy is running below capacity. These are legitimate concerns.

But I'll be honest — I am grateful every single day that it's Mark Carney sitting across the table from these people. Steady, experienced, and not remotely intimidated. Canada could not have a better person in that chair right now.

There's a difference between a country under pressure and a country in collapse. Canada got back to work. The loudmouths should own that.

"The receipts don't lie. The silence does."

SOURCES: Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey, May 2026 | Statistics Canada GDP Q1 2026 | TD Economics Canadian Employment Analysis, June 2026 | Poilievre open letter to PM Carney, May 31, 2026 | Conservative opposition motion, co-sponsored Lantsman, Scheer, Warkentin, June 2026 | Fraser Institute, “Dark clouds loom over Canada’s economy in 2026,” December 2025 | Government of Canada Spring Economic Update 2026 | Bank of Canada testimony, parliamentary committee, June 2026 | Vancouver Observer, Fraser Institute foreign funding investigation, 2012–2013.

Canada is in a recession.

There. I said it! Let the MAGA and Maple MAGA crowd have their moment and do their little victory lap.

Here’s what they’re counting on: that you won’t read past the HEADLINE.

SO LET’S READ PAST IT.

Statistics Canada reported that real GDP fell 0.1% on an annualized basis in Q1 2026. That follows a 1% annualized decline in Q4 2025. Two negative quarters. Technically, a recession by SOME definitions. The conservative pundit class — on both sides of the border — has been waving that number around like it’s a death certificate.

That 0.1% figure is annualized. That means StatCan takes a near-zero quarterly wobble and projects it out as if it ran for a full year. The actual quarter-over-quarter change? Essentially flat. The economy wasn’t collapsing. It was standing still to catch its breath. BMO Capital Markets called it straight: the “R-bomb overstates the damage.” Capital Economics called it a TRADE-INDUCED technical recession that was likely already over. And April? Early numbers show a sharp 0.4% rebound, led by mining, oil, and gas.

That’s not a collapse. That's the bottom of a dip with the recovery already underway.

I SAW THIS COMING. I SAID IT.

Back when I wrote “Bring It”, I said this administration would use TRADE AS A WEAPON. That it would be deliberate, calculated, and designed to make Canadians feel worried, pressured, and ready to deal. I wasn’t being dramatic. I was reading their script.

This is what economic warfare looks like. You manufacture a crisis, you flood the zone with the narrative, and you wait for the target to feel the fear.

They set the trap. They just didn’t count on Canadians refusing to step into it.

AND THEN THERE’S THE MAPLE MAGA CROWD.

Some Canadians — and I use that word sarcastically — who are the same as the hypocrite leading them. Poilievre and his Maple MAGA foot soldiers are one and the same. One performs outrage about the cost of living while voting against every measure designed to address it. The others amplifying every bad headline, misinforming every good news, and carrying water for the dictator trying to break our country apart. Different roles. Same treachery.

I have tried to understand these people. But I keep coming back to the same place: there is no version of this that isn’t a betrayal. They are not patriots in opposition. They are a foreign billionaire’s useful idiots. Just another tool. Another lever. Another useful noise machine pointed at a country he wants to own.

NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT WHO’S ACTUALLY HURTING.

While Trump and his bootlickers are celebrating Canada’s “recession,” let’s look at the scoreboard they don’t want you to see.

The US economy grew 1.6% in Q1 2026. Sounds better, right? Look under the hood. US housing investment fell for the fifth straight quarter. Net trade subtracted over a full percentage point from growth. A significant chunk of that headline number came from government spending bouncing back after a shutdown — a one-time sugar rush, not structural strength. Deloitte’s own economists project US real GDP declining in both 2027 and 2028.

And Trump’s tariffs — the ones he used as a weapon against Canada — were ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision. The legal and economic chaos he created is now eating his own economy alive.

Whatever this pressure campaign was supposed to accomplish inside Canadian politics, it produced the exact opposite result. They needed Canada to panic. Canada didn’t, so let’s not start now.

BUT NONE OF THIS MEANS WE’RE THROUGH IT.

The CUSMA talks are coming, and you should expect the worst, because these people are the worst. Consider this: on the exact day Canada’s trade minister arrived in Washington to begin trade talks, Trump posted his “51st state” jibe again, attaching an article about the Canadian economy. Then the US ambassador to Canada reposted it. That was not subtle. That was a bully reminding you he is still a bully. That the months of relative quiet were not a change of heart. Just a pause.

The pressure isn’t stopping. The noise isn’t stopping. Every bad headline gets amplified, every hard number gets weaponized. And understand this clearly: there will be pauses. There will be quieter weeks. There will be moments where it looks like things have cooled down. Then the threat will return. They can run this stop-start pressure campaign all the way to 2028. Canada cannot treat this as a problem that gets permanently solved through one negotiation. It has to be managed as a standing strategic condition.

Thanks to more of us every day, we have Mark Carney, who is methodically dismantling our generations-long dependence that left us this exposed. Diversifying trade. Building relationships with Europe and the Indo-Pacific. Knocking down interprovincial barriers. His Buy Canadian policy. Reducing our over-dependence on US markets — something that should have happened decades ago and didn’t, because it was easier not to. We need to let him know we have his back.

It’s going to take time. It’s going to hurt more before it hurts less.

They wanted us demoralized. They wanted us desperate. They wanted us looking at that number and thinking it’s over.

It’s NOT OVER. It’s barely begun. And every day Carney is at that table, every dollar we spend at home instead of across the border, every Canadian who refuses to buy the panic — that’s the fight. That’s always been the fight.

The trap is real. The pain is real. The collapse they needed?

That part will NEVER happen. And like we said before, BRING IT. 🍁

"I saw this on my Substack feed, and it resonated so much I wanted to share it. It feels very true to me: Every day. Uphill. With Trump's economy on his back and a saboteur at his heels. And he's still climbing."

SOURCES:
Statistics Canada — Gross Domestic Product, Income and Expenditure, First Quarter 2026 https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/260529/dq260529a-eng.htm

BMO Capital Markets via Better Dwelling — “Canadian GDP Now Shows Recession, BMO Says Not Quite” https://betterdwelling.com/canadian-gdp-now-shows-recession-bmo-says-not-quite/

Capital Economics via BNN Bloomberg — “Canada Slips Into Technical Recession as Economy Stalls in Q1” https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/economics/2026/05/29/canada-slips-into-technical-recession-as-economy-stalls-in-q1-statcan/

EY US Economic Outlook — US GDP Q1 2026 https://www.ey.com/en_us/insights/strategy/macroeconomics/us-gdp

Deloitte Insights — US Economic Forecast Q1 2026 https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/economy/us-economic-forecast/united-states-outlook-analysis.html

WilmerHale — “Supreme Court Strikes Down IEEPA Tariffs” https://www.wilmerhale.com/en/insights/client-alerts/20260220-supreme-court-strikes-down-ieepa-tariffs-what-now

Tax Foundation — Tariff Tracker 2026 https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/trump-tariffs-trade-war/

I told you he was three moves ahead.

Move one: he stripped Danielle Smith’s referendum of democratic legitimacy without breaking stride. Move two: he invoked Brexit — not as a metaphor, but as a man who managed the economic wreckage in real time — and has the standing to say what a RECKLESS separation vote will cost. Move three: he got on a plane.

This is what MOVE THREE looked like.

Mark Carney walked into the Economic Club of New York on May 28th. This is not a friendly room. This is Wall Street’s living room — the capital managers, the sovereign wealth funds, the CEOs whose president has spent eighteen months threatening to annex Canada by economic force, slapping tariffs on its exports, and musing openly about letting the continental trade deal expire. The country Canadians have been boycotting for over a year. Now that’s what I call big Canadian cojones.

He didn't grovel. He didn't perform the ritual every other world leader has been performing — the Oval Office reality TV auditions, the Mar-a-Lago pilgrimages, the ring-kissing, the carefully worded statement afterward pretending the meeting went better than it did. He stood at the podium and read the room a CV. Canada's.

“The world is undergoing a rupture... led by the United States.”

Flat. Clinical. Delivered the way a doctor reads a diagnosis to the people who caused the illness. Then he moved on to Canada’s answer.

A trillion dollars of investment incoming over five years. The most competitive business tax rate in the G7 — half the G7 average and four points below the Americans. Nearly 50 million tonnes of LNG capacity annually by 2030, doubling by 2040. A pipeline moving a million barrels of Alberta crude per day toward Asia. Fifty-six critical mineral agreements signed with more than ten countries in a single year. A doubled electricity grid. The first operational small modular reactor in the G7. NATO targets met for the first time since the Berlin Wall came down. Canada leading the multinational brigade on the front line in Latvia. And one of the largest per-capita backers of Ukraine going.

“That is what an energy superpower looks like when it decides to really act as one.”

All the while a thin-skinned president has been weaponizing tariffs against Canada and allies, threatening entire industries on a whim, and throwing tantrums that cost everyone — including Americans — billions.

BACK IN OTTAWA, Pierre Poilievre rose in the House of Commons with his rebuttal. Carney, he announced, had gone to New York to “expand his favourite export: speeches.” That was it. That was the response of Canada’s Official Opposition to our Prime Minister standing before 200 Wall Street heavyweights, making Canada’s case with a trillion-dollar investment pitch and the receipts to back it up. A joke. About speeches.

How fucking embarrassing. What an absolute lightweight. Give me a break — Poilievre couldn’t find his way out of a paper bag, let alone the Economic Club of New York, without Google Maps.

Here’s what separated Carney’s remarks from a brag sheet. He buried knives in that speech so politely you’d need to read the transcript twice to find the entry wounds. He never said Trump’s name. Not once. He didn’t have to.

“Nostalgia is not a strategy.”

That line is aimed dead between the eyes of a movement whose entire political brand is “Make America Great AGAIN.” The whole pitch is nostalgia. He just called it a losing hand — to a room full of the people funding it.

“A country that cannot feed, fuel, or defend itself is not truly sovereign.”

Think carefully about who, in this picture, cannot defend itself without 99 per cent of its natural gas, 85 per cent of its electricity imports, and 60 per cent of its crude oil arriving from the polite country to the north.

And then the finishing move. Standing in New York, Carney looked at the room and said it:

“Canada Strong will help make America great again.”

He took the slogan. The single most sacred four words in the MAGA hymnal — and he repurposed them as Canadian foreign policy. The ass-kissing US Ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, a man whose job is to carry water for Washington, reposted it and said a lot of Americans could get behind that message. That’s wilder than fiction.

They cheered the man trolling them. That is a knife so sharp the victim thanks you for the haircut.

I’ll give you the honest version, because even fan clubs need to deal in facts.

Some numbers have fluctuated depending on who’s asking, and the frustration over a promised trade deal that hasn’t materialized is real. The CUSMA review lands July 1st like a guillotine, and there is no guarantee the man in the White House doesn’t torch the whole thing out of spite. Forewarned is forearmed. Canada, just be ready.

The Liberals still lead Conservatives by double digits nationally, and those numbers have held. This is not a government governing from weakness. This is a government with the wind at its back, building the infrastructure so that when Washington goes fully feral — and it will — Canada doesn’t need the arsonist.

Deals with the EU, India, ASEAN, Mercosur, Thailand, the Philippines. The only non-European member of the EU’s defence procurement scheme. A new multilateral defence bank. A dense web of partnerships woven tight enough that the day America goes fully off the rails, Canada shrugs and sells its gas to Asia instead.

And in a world where a corrupt, deranged president ends trade talks for whatever reason he feels that morning, or even no reason, what every country signing those agreements is actually buying is this:

“We have earned the most valuable one, which is trust.”

You cannot tariff trust. You cannot annex it. You cannot generate it on Truth Social at 3am.

Move one dismantled Smith. Move two established his credibility on the existential stakes. Move three walked into the most powerful financial room on earth, made Canada’s case with the receipts to back it up, and stole the other team’s slogan on the way out.

The man who ran the Bank of England through Brexit and the Bank of Canada through the global financial crisis did not come to New York to ask for anything.

He came to remind them who keeps their lights on. 🍁

This piece is from the inside — a Canadian’s perspective. Hat tip to “I Fucking Love Australia” — one of the sharpest pens covering this story from the outside. Go read the full piece.

I Fucking Love Australia

DEAR DONALD. THIS IS HOW A BUSINESS MAN ROLLS YOU FUCKING SLOB.

Mark Carney stood in the heart of the empire, nicked the MAGA slogan straight off Trump’s head, and read out a to-do list that made the President look like a man who got lost on the way to the dunny. This is what leadership looks like. Canberra, are you fucking watching…

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2 months ago · 1114 likes · 145 comments · I Fucking Love Australia

Does her face look like someone who takes any good advice? Yeah. I didn’t think so either. 😏

Danielle Smith thought she was making some kind of power move. She wasn’t. She was handing Mark Carney exactly what he needed — two days before he flew to New York to make Canada’s case to the most powerful rooms in global finance.

Smith added a separation question to Alberta’s October referendum. Not a direct independence vote — a process question, asking Albertans whether they want to begin the legal path toward a future referendum on separation. She framed it as consequence-free. A simple question. NO BIG DEAL.

Half of Albertans find the question confusing; Smith is manufacturing the confusion deliberately — because confused voters are easier to manipulate.

Carney dismantled it without breaking stride.

He didn’t call a special press conference. He didn’t summon cameras for a dramatic statement. He dropped his response at a routine housing announcement — calm, deliberate, devastating — and then moved on. That is not a man reacting to a crisis. That is a man executing a plan he already had.

He stripped the question of democratic legitimacy in a single sentence: Albertans never voted for this. It wasn’t in Smith’s platform. It wasn’t in any party’s platform in the last provincial election. It has no mandate. Carney said it — the way only he can. Precisely. Publicly. And on the record.

Before Smith went public, Carney tried to dissuade her privately. And when a reporter asked about it, Carney’s answer was seven words:

“THE PREMIER DOESN’T ALWAYS TAKE MY ADVICE.” She ignored his private counsel. He went public. Excellent.

Then he invoked BREXIT. This is where it gets important.

When anyone else warns about the dangers of separation votes, it sounds like what it would be — a political argument. When Mark Carney says it, it is something else entirely. He was the Governor of the Bank of England when the Brexit campaign was raging and the vote was cast. He was in the room — managing the economic shock in real time — as a country spent years trying to escape the consequences of a vote millions of people didn’t fully understand they were casting. When he tells Albertans that Smith’s referendum is a DANGEROUS BLUFF — that voting yes to a process is not a free option, that it can become the final answer — he is not reading from a briefing note. He is speaking from direct, painful, personal experience.

No Canadian Prime Minister has ever had that credibility on this specific question. She gave him the stage. He used it with surgical precision.

Carney has made clear this will be fought — legally if necessary. Constitutional challenges remain on the table. Smith may have thought she found a clever enough question to avoid federal scrutiny. She may have badly miscalculated.

Then he got on a plane.

Carney flew to New York — top CEOs, capital managers, sovereign wealth funds — to position Canada as the premier destination for global investment. He delivered remarks at the Economic Club of New York, one of the most prestigious platforms in global finance.

Think about the sequencing. He publicly calls Smith’s referendum a dangerous bluff, strips it of democratic legitimacy, invokes his personal Brexit experience — and then walks into a room full of the most powerful people on earth.

That’s not a coincidence. That’s the message.

Before asking some of the world’s largest capital to bet on Canada, he needed to say with complete credibility that this country is stable, united, and led by a government that will not allow separatist uncertainty to threaten the investment climate — exactly what Smith is manufacturing in Alberta. The statement to Smith wasn’t just domestic politics. It was the last piece of the picture he needed before those meetings began.

The numbers show exactly how strong that picture is. His government’s approval sits at 67% nationally. In Alberta itself — the province Smith claims is ready to walk — his approval sits at 61%. Poilievre has collapsed to 39%, trailing Carney by 19 points and falling further every month.

These are not honeymoon numbers, fading. They are rising. A Prime Minister whose numbers keep climbing while his opponent’s keep falling has the wind completely at his back — and he knows it.

Smith built her power on the assumption that Ottawa would tiptoe. That a Liberal Prime Minister would hedge, defer, and avoid the confrontation. That assumption is now dead. Clearly, she wasn’t paying attention. Wrong again, Danielle.

Smith’s separatists had no plan for a Prime Minister who is winning in Alberta and will use it to fight for Canada. They built their bullshit on Ottawa’s weakness. But they never planned for Mark Carney. 🍁

On May 20, 2026, a UCP-DOMINATED committee VOTED to put Alberta separation on the October ballot. The news release went out before the vote was finished. The committee chair was quoted. The meeting was still in session. That’s how badly they wanted this.

What most Canadians don’t know yet is where the machinery behind that vote was built — and who built it. The answer isn’t in Canada. It’s Grand Rapids, Michigan. And the man who connects the dots between a TRUMP-ERA VOTER-TARGETING APP, the biggest PRIVACY BREACH in Alberta history, and a REFERENDUM being railroaded onto the October ballot has a title:

The United States Ambassador to Canada. Pete Hoekstra.

HOEKSTRA — Trump’s appointed ambassador to Canada, former Michigan congressman, former chair of the Michigan Republican Party — personally endorsed and promoted an American voter-targeting app called 10XVOTES at Trump rallies in 2024. When Hoekstra was asked whether the U.S. government had a position on American operatives helping break Canada apart, he answered: “Who they work with in Canada is not our responsibility.”

Read that again. Slowly. The sitting U.S. Ambassador to Canada just told a Canadian journalist that Washington doesn’t care if American operatives HELP DISMEMBER our country.

This isn’t a coincidence. Hoekstra and 10xVotes co-founder Drew Born sit on the same Michigan board together. Their political and financial ties run decades deep. This is not a collection of strangers who happened to share an app. This is a
network — a deep, cash-soaked, American Christian-right network with its hands inside an Alberta referendum.

On May 8, Hoekstra was scheduled to anchor a fireside chat at the Canada Strong and Free Network conference in Ottawa — Canada’s biggest annual conservative policy jamboree. Danielle Smith was there for an afternoon fireside chat. Pierre Poilievre delivered the keynote. Then, with hours to spare, Hoekstra vanished. Summoned to Washington for — how convenient — “urgent White House meetings.” His name was scrubbed from the program at the 11th hour. His session, deleted. And he has NOT RETURNED to Canada since.

That’s not a scheduling conflict. That’s a man who knew the floor was about to cave in.

Let’s talk about the man who didn’t bolt. PIERRE POILIEVRE — Leader of the Opposition, self-appointed champion of Canadian UNITY — delivered the keynote at a conference where the U.S. ambassador embedded in a foreign interference operation was scheduled to appear. Did Poilievre know about the 10xVotes connection before he took that stage? Did anyone on his staff? Has he ever been asked by our inept media? More importantly — WHY is the man who wants to be Prime Minister of Canada sharing a marquee with separatists, foreign operatives, and Danielle Smith, while simultaneously wrapping himself in the flag for the cameras?

We’re still waiting for an answer, Pierre.

Which brings us to the man at the centre of it all. DAVID PARKER, founder of the Centurion Project — the Canadian Clone of 10xVotes — is the man who engineered Danielle Smith’s rise to power through Take Back Alberta. Same interface. Same functionality. Same political theology. Parker’s Centurion Project is now at the centre of the largest privacy breach in Alberta history — the personal data of 3 MILLION Albertans, stolen and exposed. Elections Alberta, the RCMP, and the provincial privacy commissioner have all launched independent investigations. And Parker has refused to sign a sworn legal declaration confirming he would stop using the stolen voter data.

He ran to Texas. Only traitors run, hide, and refuse to cooperate.

And then there’s DANIELLE SMITH, the ringleader. The premier who says she doesn’t support separation while doing everything in her power to put it on the ballot. The premier who spent 2025 rewriting Alberta’s citizen initiative laws — lowering the threshold, extending the deadline, stripping out constitutional safeguards — to make sure the path to a referendum stayed open. The premier who owes her leadership to her friend David Parker, now hiding in Texas. Who the fuck does she think she’s fooling?

Here is what makes yesterday’s committee vote truly obscene. Thomas Lukaszuk, the former Alberta deputy premier behind the Forever Canadian petition — signed by nearly 500,000 Albertans who wanted to declare their unity with Canada — appeared before that committee and asked for one thing: HONESTY. He didn’t get it. While debate was still underway, while Lukaszuk was still in the room, the UCP caucus issued a public statement declaring the motion had passed. The vote hadn’t been called. The government had already handed the press their victory announcement.

Smith didn’t just rig the process. She took half a million pro-Canada signatures and used them as cover for the separatist referendum those SAME Albertans were trying to prevent. She looked Lukaszuk — and every Canadian who signed that petition — in the eye and LIED.

Parker ran. Smith stayed — rewriting laws, performing outrage, and selling out Canada and every Albertan who has ever trusted her.

Alberta’s ballot. Engineered in Michigan. Funded by MAGA. Delivered by a premier who swears she’s on your side. 🍁

I am not a reporter. I want to be clear about that. I am a retired Canadian with a laptop and a deep, escalating fury at what has happened to this country’s press.

But someone has to do it. So I guess I am.

Some Canadians describe their own country as a small-time player. The biased and misinformed dismiss everything Mark Carney does as more of the same — tired Liberal policy dressed up as vision. Both are maddening — not because they are provocative, but because they are said without irony and without any apparent awareness of how WRONG they are. And from our press, crickets.

I am not a journalist. But apparently, neither is the Canadian press.

Here is some breaking news that Canadian media decided you didn't need to know about — stories that should have been impossible to ignore.

Canada just recorded its best year of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) since 2007.

While tariffs were squeezing the economy, while roughly three-quarters of exports still depended on the U.S. market, while GDP kept wobbling, while recession risk hung in the air like smoke — foreign investors poured $96.8 billion into this country. The strongest inflow in EIGHTEEN YEARS.

That is not a rounding error. That is a signal.

In the same period, foreign direct investment into the United States declined. Canada went up. The U.S. went down. A comparative confidence signal, written in the only language that never exaggerates — capital flows.

A record FDI year under tariff pressure is exactly the kind of economic story that should force itself onto front pages and into lead segments. So I searched.

Almost nothing.

Bloomberg covered it with the seriousness it deserved. The rest of Canadian media mostly looked away. And here is where it gets uncomfortable.

ASK WHO OWNS THE NEWSROOM

POSTMEDIA, the company that controls the majority of English-language daily newspapers across Canada. The National Post. The Ottawa Citizen. The Vancouver Sun. The Calgary Herald. The Edmonton Journal. The Montreal Gazette. The Toronto Sun. And more. As of 2025, 66% of Postmedia is owned by Chatham Asset Management — a U.S. private equity firm. Another 13% sits with an American investor. Canadian voices, on paper. American capital, in practice — capital that one media analyst has described as “bleeding Canadian journalism dry.”

An American hedge fund has a different set of interests than Canadian readers do. It is not interested in Canada’s industrial renaissance. It is not pricing in Canada’s Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) futures or its critical minerals or its aerospace capacity. It doesn't give a shit about journalism. It only cares about squeezing every dollar it can from a media portfolio until there's nothing left.

So when Canada’s most important economic story in nearly two decades goes uncovered, it is worth asking a harder question than whether our press missed it.

That is the silence. Now you know what’s behind it.

So let’s cover some of it ourselves.

THE STORIES ARE REAL, AND THEY’RE BUILDING.

In its latest semi-annual survey, the Global Infrastructure Investor Association — whose members collectively manage US$1 trillion in assets — ranked Canada first. Ahead of Germany. Ahead of the United Kingdom. Ahead of the United States, which slipped to third.

Here is what global capital is pointing at:

• Shell’s acquisition of ARC Resources — Shell’s largest deal in a decade. Not just buying production. Buying into Canada’s LNG growth story, the Montney, and Canada’s role in global energy security. Both boards unanimously approved it.

• The AirAsia A220 order — The largest single firm order in the aircraft’s history. 150 jets, every one assembled at Mirabel, Quebec, by nearly 5,000 Canadian workers. A global airline, based in Asia, choosing Canadian-designed and built aircraft. Carney was there in person because it was historical — and he was right to be. That is not a footnote either.

• Canada is now ranked second in FDI confidence among G20 nations — with one of the highest FDI stock-to-GDP ratios of any developed economy.

• Canada is the only G7 country with a free trade agreement with every other G7 nation — giving investors preferential access to 1.5 billion consumers across 51 countries and nearly two-thirds of global GDP.

These are not isolated transactions. They are part of a pattern. Global companies are looking at Canadian industrial capacity and making serious decisions around it. Not on a whim. Not out of politics. Out of calculation.

Canada is no longer just a stable country sitting beside the United States. It is becoming a strategic alternative — with massive room to grow: power generation, grids, ports, energy, critical minerals, AI infrastructure, defence production, space, housing, transport, and industrial capacity all moving in the same direction. Sovereign capital. European access.

Mark Carney just made it easier to gravitate toward Canada. And he keeps making it easier. Now the results are starting to show up in the record.

Canada is being repriced. Foreign investors noticed. Global companies noticed. The whole world is taking Canada seriously. But when a U.S. hedge fund owns your newsroom and a Liberal is delivering the wins, don’t be surprised by the minuscule coverage.

So here we are. A retired Canadian with a laptop, doing the work our press refuses to do. Let that sink in. 🍁

Once again, I’ve had enough! And if you’ve been paying attention, so have you.

This is one of those pieces — the kind with receipts and facts and a timeline that should make every Canadian furious. So get comfortable.

Poilievre is still saying it: Trudeau this. Trudeau that. Trudeau, Trudeau, Trudeau.

Justin Trudeau resigned in January 2025. Mark Carney won a historic come-from-behind election — one of the most stunning political reversals in Canadian history, and an absolute humiliation for Poilievre who blew a 25-point lead, lost his own seat, and still somehow refuses to sit down. STILL standing in the House of Commons invoking the name of a man who hasn’t been Prime Minister in over a year.

As recently as last week, he told a room full of Conservative faithful that Carney “hasn’t changed the Trudeau agenda — he’s accelerated it.” That “nothing has changed.” That “Mark Carney is just another Liberal.” None of it is true. Not one word of it. But Pierre has never let FACTS slow him down.

And on April 22, 2026, the cosplayer screaming about food prices every single day voted NO on Bill C-226 — the Grocery Price Transparency Bill.

That’s the thing about Pierre Poilievre. He’s very good at screaming. He’s had 21 years of practice. What he hasn’t done is much else.

I’ve already written about what Mark Carney has accomplished in just one year. That piece exists. This one is about Pierre Poilievre — his record, and his very loud, very fake indignation.

WHO IS PIERRE POILIEVRE, EXACTLY?

Pierre Poilievre has been in Parliament since 2004. He is now 46 years old. He has drawn a government paycheque for his entire adult life.

Before Parliament, he worked as a political staffer for Stockwell Day for two years. He moved to Ottawa at 20 to do political work. He was a student politician. Aside from a brief stint in corporate collections at Telus, Poilievre has worked almost exclusively in the political sphere. There’s nothing wrong with that — if you have something, anything to show for it. Pierre doesn’t.

He’s never built a business. Never run a company. Never managed an organization of consequence. Never held a real job outside politics. He is, by every definition, a career politician — the very thing he accuses everyone else of being. His colleagues called him “Skippy.” Some things write themselves.

He entered Parliament at 25. He’s still there. Still yelling. Still blaming the Liberals.

So let’s talk about what his dragged-out career has actually produced.

BEFORE WE CONTINUE, A WORD TO THE PEOPLE STILL CHEERING FOR THIS PRETENDER

I know you’re out there. I see you in the comments. And I want to speak directly to you — those of you who have decided that Poilievre is fighting for you.

He has NEVER fought for you. He never will. And let me be perfectly clear: HE fights for the wealthy, the well-connected, and the corporations that fund his Party and expect a return on that investment. Full stop.

The proof is in his voting record. Every single issue that affects your daily life — your wages, your rent, your health care, your retirement, your children, your planet — he has voted against. Every single time. Not occasionally. Not reluctantly.

Every. Single. Time.

For some of you, he has been in Parliament for your entire life. He has spent his entire career performing outrage about problems he had every opportunity to solve — and chose not to.

The anger you feel is real. The affordability crisis is real. The housing crisis is real. The cost of groceries is real and it is brutal and it deserves a real answer.

Pierre Poilievre is NOT a real answer. He is a very loud performance of one.

HIS RECORD: PURE HYPOCRISY

The record doesn’t lie. He has voted NO on every single issue he PRETENDS to champion:

He shouts about HOUSING: He voted AGAINST affordable housing measures seven separate times — in 2006, 2009, 2010, 2013, 2014, 2018, and 2019.

He shouts about SENIORS: He voted AGAINST expanding the Canada Pension Plan — the most significant improvement to our public pension system in 50 years. He voted against a 10% increase to Old Age Security for Canadians over 75.

He shouts about WORKERS: He voted AGAINST the minimum wage — TWICE. He voted for back-to-work legislation that stripped workers of the right to strike — EIGHT TIMES. According to the Canadian Labour Congress, he has voted against workers more than 500 times.

He shouts about HEALTH CARE: He voted AGAINST dental care. He voted against pharmacare — the program that provides free diabetes medication and contraceptives to Canadians who can’t afford them. He supported cuts to public health care funding of $36 billion.

He shouts about FAMILIES: He voted AGAINST $10-a-day childcare that working mothers desperately need.

He shouts about the ENVIRONMENT: While Canadians watch wildfires burn, he voted AGAINST environmental protection nearly 400 times in 20 years. He voted in favour of the environment exactly 13 times. Thirteen times, in twenty-one years.

He demands TRANSPARENCY & ACCOUNTABILITY: He voted NO on “Grocery Price Transparency.”

He screams about AFFORDABILITY: He has never once voted to make our lives more affordable.

NOT. ONCE.

POWER, CHARACTER, AND A GOLD-PLATED PENSION

From 2013 to 2015, Poilievre sat in Harper’s cabinet — Minister of Democratic Reform, then Minister of Employment. Real power. Here’s the headline: he used it to introduce the “Fair Elections Act” — legislation so condemned that 160 university professors called it a direct threat to democracy, and the Globe and Mail named it the worst legislation of 2014. It targeted the voting rights of First Nations Canadians, students, and seniors. Elections Canada said it “will not serve Canadians.” He pushed it through anyway.

While doing all of that, here’s what Pierre hopes you never find out:

He had already qualified for his own MP pension at age 31. Worth an estimated $230,000 per year. A lifetime value of $1.75 million — fully indexed to inflation and guaranteed. One of the most generous pension plans available anywhere in Canada.

He voted to make our retirement harder while sitting on a $1.75 million pension.

Let that duplicity land.

And the character to match. He has spent his entire political career defaming institutions and individuals alike — calling the Governor of the Bank of Canada “quantitatively corrupt,” dismissing experts, economists, and academics who challenged his talking points, and attacking anyone who dared question him. Never with evidence. Always with volume. Just the smears, hanging in the air, doing damage.

When the Freedom Convoy occupied Ottawa in 2022 — three weeks of harassment, destruction, and calls by some organizers to overthrow the government — Pierre showed up with Tim’s coffee and doughnuts, called them “honest, hardworking, decent people,” and rode their rage straight to the Conservative leadership. That same year he told vulnerable, desperate Canadians to put their savings in Bitcoin. Crypto — a rich man’s ruse, a game rigged for insiders where ordinary people get conned and lose everything. It crashed more than 65%. He went quiet. Filed it away. Moved on.

This is who Pierre Poilievre is. An empty suit — and Canadians have been footing the bill for over two decades. The man who screams “cut the waste” billed Canadian taxpayers $8.8 million in 2024 alone.

SO HERE WE ARE. MAY 2026.

Poilievre stands in Parliament and rails about food prices. The $8 butter. The record lineups at food banks. The families stretched past breaking. He says Carney is failing Canadians. He says nothing has changed.

And then Bill C-226 comes to a vote — a straightforward, non-partisan framework to make grocery pricing transparent. Letting Canadians see exactly where the money goes. To answer the question he has been screaming about for years.

He votes NO.

So let’s ask the question he refuses to answer:

Who the fuck is Pierre actually protecting?

Not the people paying $8 for butter. Not the families stretching every dollar at the till. Not the seniors wondering how to afford their groceries. Not the workers he’s voted against 500 times. Not the young people priced out of housing. Not the Canadians who waited long enough for him to actually do something.

But Galen Weston Jr.? The CEO of Loblaws, whose company posted record profits while Canadians lined up at food banks? The grocery industry that lobbied hard against this bill? They’re doing just fine.

21 years. A cabinet seat. A $1.75 million pension. And a NO vote on letting you see how your groceries are priced.

That’s the record. Every word of it.

So I’ll say it again: “Poilievre isn’t even Trudeau.” That’s a FACT. Trudeau actually showed up for Canadians.

Trudeau actually passed policies that put dental care in your mouth, childcare in your budget, and medication in your hands. He kept the lights on in small businesses and Canadians fed during a once-in-a-century pandemic. In case you've forgotten.

Poilievre counts on all of us being too angry and too tired to notice the only person he's ever fought for. HIMSELF.

We deserve better. Canada deserves better. And thanks to enough clear-eyed, critically thinking Canadians, we have exactly that. We have Mark Carney. 🍁

On Sunday, May 3, 2026, Mark Carney landed in Yerevan, Armenia.

He walked into a room with nearly 50 heads of state — the leaders of a continent that has spent fifteen months watching the United States hollow out the Western alliance and hand the keys to Vladimir Putin.

They didn’t just let him in. They invited him. Specifically. The guest of honour. For the first time in the history of the European Political Community, a non-European leader was given a seat at the table.

That leader was CANADIAN.

That SAME Sunday morning, Pierre Poilievre held a press conference in Toronto.

He demanded Mark Carney reveal his TRADE NEGOTIATION STRATEGY. Publicly. Because nothing says “tough negotiator” like announcing a strategy to the country holding our economy for ransom.

WHILE CARNEY WAS BUILDING A NEW WORLD ORDER

Let’s be precise about what Carney was doing in Yerevan — because precision matters here.

He wasn’t just attending. He wasn’t just observing. He wasn’t standing in the hallway waiting to be noticed.

He was LEADING.

At the invitation of European Council President António Costa, Carney addressed the full summit. He met privately with leader after leader — France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Ukraine. He sat across from the heads of the EU Council, the EU Commission, and the European Parliament, who invited him to address them directly.

Costa’s statement afterward was not diplomatic boilerplate. It was a declaration: “Europe and Canada are more than just like-minded partners — together we are building a global alliance to defend peace, shared prosperity and multilateralism.”

Carney’s own words were equally direct: “It’s my strong personal view that the international world order will be built — but it will be rebuilt out of Europe.”

Not from Washington. Not through Trump. Not by waiting for the strongmen to tire themselves out.

This is twelve months of deliberate, disciplined construction paying off in real time. Security partnerships. Defence agreements. Market access. Canada becoming the first non-European country ever admitted to the EU’s Security Action for Europe — SAFE — unlocking hundreds of billions in European defence market access for Canadian industry. France’s foreign minister floating EU membership for Canada. Out loud. On the record. A continent realigning itself — and pulling Canada into the centre of it.

And here’s what makes Yerevan so significant beyond the symbolism. Sebastien Maillard at the Jacques Delors Institute noted that the European Political Community (EPC) was originally conceived as an anti-Putin club. With Carney’s invitation, he said, it is now “taking on an anti-Trump slant.” Europe isn’t just defending itself against one autocrat anymore. It’s building a parallel architecture — one that doesn’t run through Washington. And Canada is inside it.

No wonder Carney said it plainly in Brussels last year: “As the most European of the non-European countries, Canada looks first to the European Union to build a better world.”

One year. A completely new direction.

POILIEVRE WAS IN TORONTO WITH A MICROPHONE

Pierre Poilievre had questions.

Specifically: he wanted to know what leverage Canada has in trade negotiations with the United States. And he wanted Carney to announce it publicly. In advance. To reporters. On a Sunday. On the same day our Prime Minister was being welcomed into a room that has never had a Canadian in it.

“If energy and minerals are not going to be leveraged for Canada in these negotiations, what leverage does Mr. Carney claim to have? He can’t tell us what leverage we have, what demands he’s making, what tariffs he wants to get removed — and when.”

Somewhere in Washington, someone just smiled.

The cosplayer who wants to be Prime Minister was demanding that Mark Carney reveal his hand to the country conducting economic warfare against us. Cool plan. Very tight. Definitely not insane.

This is not opposition. This is doing the other side’s reconnaissance.

Carney has assembled his Canadian Trade Team. A 24-member advisory committee — former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, former Conservative cabinet minister Lisa Raitt, former Quebec premier Jean Charest, the heads of CN Rail, Bank of Montreal, TC Energy, Teck Resources. The most cross-partisan, heavyweight negotiating bench ever assembled. O’Toole told The Canadian Press he spoke with Poilievre directly before joining. Poilievre was supportive.

So Pierre knew who was at the table. He knew that Trump’s own U.S. Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer, had already told a room full of Canadian MPs in Washington that week that energy shouldn’t come with conditions attached — the Americans told their position directly to Canadian politicians. He knew all of it.

He’s demanding it anyway.

The correct response to EXTORTION is NOT to walk outside and reveal your hand.

THE CONTRAST IS ALMOST TOO ABSURD TO PRINT

On one side: the first non-European leader in history welcomed into the European Political Community, being asked to address the full Parliament, while the President of the European Council declares a new global alliance built around Canadian partnership.

On the other: a Toronto parking lot. A microphone. And a very partisan leader demanding his opponent expose Canada’s negotiating position to the country using tariffs as a weapon against us.

Trump's lies were to make America great again. He actually made Europe great again. He made Canada indispensable to it. So why the fuck is Pierre trying to help him? 🍁

PM Carney’s Speech at the 8th European Political Community Summit – May 4, 2026

The man who exposed the personal data of 2.9 million Albertans is David Parker. He runs the Centurion Project, the separatist group that posted your voter information online. He also runs Take Back Alberta — the organization that put Danielle Smith in the Premier’s chair.

This is not speculation. It is documented fact.

Parker campaigned openly for Smith at her UCP leadership events. He spoke with Smith “fairly regularly” throughout her leadership campaign about politics, ideas and philosophy. Danielle Smith was a guest at David Parker’s wedding. Smith didn’t just know Parker. They used each other. And their relationship didn’t begin with this scandal — it built the conditions for it.

Take Back Alberta organized the membership drives that helped oust Jason Kenney, supported Smith’s successful UCP leadership bid, and secured a majority of seats on the UCP board.

Parker didn’t hide it. He stated his objective out loud, WITHOUT apology: “We need to control the party. We need to control the party that’s in power.” And he did. The party he controls passed the laws that made this breach possible.

WHO IS THE REAL DAVID PARKER.

David Parker is not simply an Alberta political organizer with ambitions above his station. He is a node in the North American hard right network that has been systematically dismantling democratic institutions on both sides of the border.

Parker gained familiarity with the Centurion voter ID tool during his time with Tucker Carlson’s Live Tour. At the public launch of the Centurion Project on April 29, 2026 — the same night Elections Alberta investigators walked through the door — Parker told the crowd that this app helped deliver Michigan to Donald Trump in 2024. He wasn’t presenting a local grassroots initiative. He was presenting an imported American MAGA tool, road-tested in a federal election, now pointed directly at an Alberta sovereignty referendum.

MAGA infrastructure. Canadian soil with the Premier’s full blessing.

TWO BILLS. SEVEN YEARS. ONE OUTCOME.

In 2019, the UCP fired Election Commissioner Lorne Gibson — the independent watchdog who was actively investigating campaign financing violations tied to the UCP leadership race. The bill passed in four days. The Ethics Commissioner warned that UCP MLAs under active investigation would breach the Conflicts of Interest Act if they voted on it. They voted anyway.

Independent enforcement: GONE.

In 2025, Danielle Smith’s government passed Bill 54. Before it became law, Chief Electoral Officer Gordon McClure wrote to every member of the Legislature warning them what the bill would do: investigations could not begin until a complainant had already provided a substantively completed investigation of their own. No other Canadian jurisdiction imposed such a standard. Current investigations would need to be abandoned. The Legislature passed it anyway.

The result, in Chief Electoral Officer Gordon McClure’s own words on May 1, 2026:

“As the legislation is currently written, Elections Alberta CANNOT PROTECT your data.”

THE TIMELINE THEY’RE HIDING.

On March 31, 2026, Substack journalist Jen Gerson warned Elections Alberta about the Centurion Project’s database. The agency sat on the information for nearly a month while the personal data of 2.9 million Albertans remained exposed.

On April 29, 2026, Parker launched the Centurion Project publicly. Elections Alberta investigators were in the room. Parker told the crowd there was nothing illegal about the project’s use of the voter list and said: “If anyone objects to the release of the names and addresses, we’ll see you in court.”

He knew exactly what he had. He knew exactly what the law — the law the UCP wrote — allowed him to do with it.

On April 30, 2026, the injunction was granted less than twelve hours later. The RCMP opened an investigation the same day. For 2.9 million Albertans, it was thirty days too late.

THE BOTTOM LINE.

David Parker built the machine that exposed your data.

Danielle Smith’s government built the legal conditions that made it possible.

The same network. The same people. The same party.

She didn’t just let this happen. She legislated it.

And when it all unravelled, Danielle Smith was conveniently on a trade mission in the United Kingdom. She came back and performed outrage for the cameras — for a breach her own legislation made inevitable. The CORRUPTION isn’t subtle. It isn’t buried in footnotes or hidden in committee votes. It was passed into law, in public, over the written objections of the people whose job it was to protect you. They knew exactly what they were doing.

That’s not a scandal that got away from them. That was always the plan. 🍁

Prime Minister Mark Carney has been INVITED to attend the European Political Community Summit in Yerevan, Armenia, on May 4th. This is not a routine diplomatic trip.

Canada will be the FIRST non-European country ever invited to participate in an EPC summit.

WHAT IS THE EUROPEAN POLITICAL COMMUNITY (EPC)?

Most Canadians, including me, had never heard of it. Here’s what it is.

The EPC was created in October 2022 — directly in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It brought together 47 European nations: all 27 EU member states, plus the UK, Ukraine, Turkey, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, the Western Balkans, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the European micro-states.

No Russia. No Belarus. Deliberately excluded.

Every European democracy that matters — France, Germany, the Nordics, the Baltics, the Balkans — in one room, twice a year, talking security, energy, democracy, and the future of the continent.

In seven summits it has never once invited a country from outside Europe.

Until now.

WHY CANADA?

Europe is not doing this out of sentiment. They’re doing it out of strategy.

Europe spent decades assuming America would always be there — that NATO was permanent, that Washington was reliable, that the transatlantic alliance was simply the way the world worked. That assumption is now gone. And Europe is responding not with panic, but with architecture. New partnerships. A wider perimeter of democratic nations who will show up for each other when it matters.

And they called Canada.

Not because we’re geographically European. But because Canada has spent the last several months making itself strategically indispensable — to European security, Arctic defence, energy supply, Ukraine, and the broader democratic alliance forming in direct response to the authoritarian one.

This didn’t happen overnight. Since taking office, Carney has forged a new EU-Canada Strategic Partnership, signed a Security and Defence Partnership with Europe, and in February made Canada the first non-European country to join the EU’s Security Action for Europe — the SAFE initiative — unlocking billions in defence industry opportunities for Canadian companies.

European Council President António Costa put it plainly: “Europe and Canada are more than just like-minded partners — together we are building a global alliance to defend peace, shared prosperity and multilateralism.”

That is not diplomatic boilerplate. That is a statement of intent.

WHY YEREVAN, ARMENIA?

The location matters.

Armenia had spent decades in Russia’s orbit — clinging to Russia for security, for energy, for protection — and then watched Russia betray her completely.

In September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a military offensive against the Armenian population of Artsakh — the disputed region also known as Nagorno-Karabakh. The offensive lasted less than 24 hours before Armenian forces were forced to surrender. Russian peacekeepers, stationed there specifically to protect the population, stood by and did nothing. Over 100,000 Armenians were forcibly displaced from their ancestral home. People who had lived on that land for centuries fled with whatever they could carry. Another Armenian exodus.

Russia didn’t just fail Armenia. Russia chose Azerbaijan. Armenia finally understood that Russia was never their protector. Russia was their jailer.

That was the moment Armenia began choosing the West. Slowly, carefully, but unmistakably — pivoting toward Europe, toward democratic partnerships, away from Moscow. It took courage. Armenia is a small country surrounded by Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Iran. Choosing the West is not without risk.

Holding the EPC summit in Yerevan is Europe’s answer to that pivot. We see what you did. We see what it cost you. You are not alone.

This is personal for me. I have family in Yerevan. I spent years watching Armenia make devastating choices — alliances with Russia that betrayed the very people they were supposed to protect. I am Armenian-Canadian, and I did not know if I would ever see this moment: Armenia standing with Europe, and Canada in the room.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Mark Carney came to office with a vision: build Canada’s strength at home, diversify our partnerships abroad, reduce our dependence on the United States, reposition Canada on the world stage.

In the space of one week, two things happened that would have seemed unthinkable a year ago. Canada announced its first ever sovereign wealth fund — a long-term vehicle for investing Canada’s natural resource wealth strategically, rather than squandering it. And Canada was invited into a room of 47 European nations as the first non-European country ever to sit at that table.

These are not separate stories. They are one story.

A country getting serious about its own finances. A country getting serious about its place in the world. A country that spent decades punching below its weight — now being called to lead.

Canada is building something. Quietly. Seriously. With the kind of long-term strategic thinking we have NEVER seen from this country — not in my lifetime.

The world is changing fast. It’s good to know Canada is changing with it — and earning seats at tables that didn’t exist for us before.

Mark Carney showed up ready, on day one, and has never stopped working. He earned this seat — for all of us. 🍁

Before Charles even landed, Trump — the international embarrassment wearing a suit that lost the argument with his bulk, the sentient spray tan with the attention span of a goldfish having a stroke — leaked a Pentagon memo threatening to hand the Falkland Islands to Argentina. You know, the islands Britain went to war over.

A lovely welcome gift for the King. Trump-style.

Charles came anyway. Because he’s been enduring insufferable men his entire life. Stiff upper lip and all that.

He walked into Congress and committed the most exquisitely polite act of political takedown in modern diplomatic history. He championed NATO. Defended the Royal Navy. Defended Ukraine. Praised checks and balances on executive power. Every sentence was a perfectly tailored SLAP — wrapped in such impeccable manners, the slappees smiled and asked for more.

The Democrats applauded because they agreed with every word. The spineless Republicans — grinning, cheering, applauding while King Charles systematically dismantled every Trump worldview. He dressed them down and they gave him a standing ovation for it.

And Trump told reporters afterward, “He made a great speech. I was very jealous.”

HE WAS JEALOUS. Of the speech that was criticizing him.“I cannot!”

Then at the state dinner, the bloated golden calf stood up and told the room that Charles “agrees with me” on Iran. Just casually volunteered the King of England as a character witness for his war. Buckingham Palace issued a correction the next morning.

But nothing could have prepared me for the video.

Queen Camilla, 78, the picture of grace — immaculate in white, hat perfectly placed — working the receiving line on the South Lawn. And then — like my brother’s Doodle, who just heard a treat bag open three rooms away — Trump launches himself in front of her. Full barge. Cuts off the Queen of England mid-handshake. Thunders down the line, pumping hands like he's never met his own cabinet before. And his cabinet of misfit-toys grin back, reach out, and shake Trump’s hand, oblivious to the fact that they’re the joke. Except Rubio. Stone-faced. Priceless.

Camilla’s face deserved its own Nobel.

The dumbass has met two English Monarchs and “shoulder-checked” them both.

The King of England came, conquered, and left with his dignity fully intact. While Trump is still scratching his decomposing combover. 🍁