Canada

Trump accomplished what was once considered impossible: Our northern neighbors have united against us.

In May, I reoriented my algorithms to flood me with Canadian content, turned on push notifications from The Globe and Mail, and temporarily moved my family north of the border.

For months, Donald Trump had been casually threatening to annex Canada and turn it into a state, adding insult to the injury of the trade war he was waging on the country. One prime minister resigned amid Trump’s bullying, and another was elected because voters thought he could stand up to him. In the ordinarily placid provinces, feelings of bewilderment, anxiety, and offense hardened into a defiant resolve against the United States. “Elbows up,” went the nation’s new hockey-inspired mantra. As a Montreal journalist told me, Americans were preoccupied with “12 different crises.” In Canada, this was the crisis.

TDS & Contempt for Canadians.

Nearly 6,000 acres of old Arizona farmland once intended for a residential subdivision is on track to potentially become home to the first big new U.S. copper mine in more than a decade.

If all goes as planned, Ivanhoe Electric will begin construction of its Santa Cruz mine early next year and start selling copper cathodes to manufacturers before the end of 2028. That is a blink of an eye in mining, where the time between discoveries and production is often measured in decades.

New signs greet Canadians still crossing the border into northeastern Maine with a cheery bilingual message of “Bienvenue à nos amis canadiens!” Officials have taken care to ensure the Maple Leaf is still fluttering, and that frayed flags are replaced. The airport in Presque Isle has urged its employees to be delicate in conversation with Canadian travellers who may not want to hear American views on trade and tariffs.

No joking about the 51st state, local tourism authorities have urged. No chatting even amongst staff about how nice it would be to get to Canadian Tire without a passport, lest a Canadian customer overhear.

‘Keep your money in Canada’: Duty-free shop owner urges travellers to buy local

A duty-free shop at a New Brunswick border crossing is shutting down after more than three decades in business, with

its owner warning that more closures could follow as Canada’s trade tensions with the United States continue to strain cross-border traffic.

John Slipp, owner of the Woodstock Duty Free Shop in Belleville, N.B., says he plans to close his store within the next six weeks, citing plummeting sales, a drop in Canadian travellers, and the lack of federal support.

‘Supply management props up 10,000 millionaire farmers at everyone else’s expense. Trump sees through it. Why can’t our leaders?’

The average Canadian family spends $500 per year to subsidize the 10,000 or so dairy farmers — most of whom are millionaires — who make up a dairy lobby that has had a stranglehold on Canadian politics for a generation. Unlike a tax, that $500 doesn’t go towards maintaining roads, or equipping the army. It mainly goes into the pockets of those producers.

Let me say at the outset that I’m not intending to disrespect our dairy farmers. They are conscientious, hard working people who have built their farms under the system as they found it.

Mark Carney has vowed to maintain the Supply Management system for dairy, poultry and eggs in Canada, pandering to Quebec which holds this system dear to its heart. To cement this, he passed a Bloc sponsored Bill on June 5 bolstering support for the system by removing his Foreign Affairs minister’s privilege of changing it in any renegotiation. Unfortunately for Mr. Carney, and perhaps for Canada, this is unlikely to satisfy Mr. Trump who has announced his displeasure at the unfair trade practice.

While Canada’s official goal in trade negotiations with the U.S is to remove all tariffs imposed on us by President Donald Trump, it’s now clear this is an aspirational target rather than a realistic one.

The realistic one is to negotiate a deal with Trump that Canadians can live with, given that the U.S. President, a self-described “tariff person,” is on a campaign to use them to demolish the existing global economic order in favour of the U.S.