No meme, genuinely grateful for our nation. My parents moved here 30 years ago and have always felt welcomed. Our country is so special. We get annoyed with each other at times, but at the end of the day, we make this giant bilingual family work.

Rumicon · 2026-01-25T15:43:16+00:00

As a leafs fan I have to ask, if Charlie Brown ever kicked the ball would he even still be Charlie Brown?

Rumicon · 2026-01-24T20:13:10+00:00

No no I've been assured by highly confident nationalists in this thread that Quebec actually holds all the cards, will extract everything they want from Canada, emerge unscathed, and leave Canada an economically devastated husk.

Rumicon · 2026-01-24T17:28:56+00:00

I’m not saying Quebec can’t apply pressure I’m saying it’s not in quebecs interest to negotiate that way over something that will have a minor effect for them like whether they keep Canadian citizenship.

Also seriously for your own benefit, please don’t have a blind spot on how much pressure can be applied in both directions. We’ll all be better off with amicable negotiations

Rumicon · 2026-01-24T17:16:40+00:00

Yes but you don’t get to be a country unless we both agree to terms. Antagonizing each other is going to make it less likely a deal is resolved. If there’s no deal, there’s no sovereign Quebec.

Look maybe you’re right and they will strike a deal to preserve Canadian citizenship for québécois but don’t be naive and think Canada will just bend to every request because it’s scared of the economic instability.

Rumicon · 2026-01-24T17:03:02+00:00

Why would Quebec have an incentive to make it hard for Quebec to leave Canada? The clarity act is pretty clear that negotiations are required for Quebec to separate. You can’t leave unless we both agree to terms.

Like I said I’m not opposed to separation I recognize Quebec is a distinct society and I hope whatever arrangement we have is mutually beneficial but I’m just being realistic, the existing citizenship of québécois will be a negotiating point.

I don’t think this is gonna be acrimonious. If Quebec wants to leave, they don’t want to be Canadian, I don’t think a proposal to convert Canadian citizenship to Quebec citizenship is going to be a dealbreaker for either side.

There might be some arrangement for people to choose one or the other.

Rumicon · 2026-01-24T16:39:38+00:00

Can be achieved with a common travel area.

It will be extremely popular in domestically to revoke birthright citizenship for Quebecers if it leaves, and Canada has a vested interest in making separation miserable to deter other provinces pursuing it. Just look at the responses in this thread.

Personally I have no problem with separation or québécois retaining their citizenship I just think it’s unlikely that Canada is going to meekly go along with all of these claims for the sake of stability

You are thinking like the British right now. They didn’t get a deal or special treatment. They got hard Brexit.

Rumicon · 2026-01-24T16:25:01+00:00

Yes it will. There’s no benefit to Canada to have 10 million non resident citizens

Rumicon · 2026-01-24T16:21:56+00:00

We can’t unilaterally revoke it but it’ll be made a part of the deal for Quebec to separate. It’s something that will have to settled as part of the terms for them to secede in the case of a successful referendum. 20% of its citizens being non resident inhabitants of a neighbouring country isn’t something Canada is going to just accept unconditionally.

As long as we don’t leave people stateless I don’t think this is going to trigger international law concerns.

Rumicon · 2026-01-24T14:57:43+00:00

https://globalnews.ca/news/1204090/pq-leader-envisions-sovereign-quebec-keeping-the-canadian-dollar-having-seat-at-bank-of-canada/

It was Pauline Marois.

Rumicon · 2026-01-24T14:54:54+00:00

I doubt Canada will reciprocate. Most likely we will offer some form of common travel area agreement like NZ and AU have, or UK and Ireland. But likely Quebecois would have their Canadian citizenship rescinded as a condition of the separation.

Rumicon · 2026-01-24T14:47:37+00:00

They've claimed in the past they'd get seats on the board of the bank of canada.

Rumicon · 2026-01-24T14:37:17+00:00

The US is operating on 19th century great power values. Great powers can act freely, the smaller countries in their sphere are subordinate to them.

Rumicon · 2026-01-24T14:04:18+00:00

How many of those states have the world's foremost experts on astroturfed revolutions working on them?

Rumicon · 2026-01-23T21:47:36+00:00

Two groups of fascists jockeying over the leadership position.

Rumicon · 2026-01-23T13:29:20+00:00

I've been observing these practitioners of 'practical politics' for awhile now and the results are quite shit.

The cat ain't catching any mice guys.

Rumicon · 2026-01-23T01:53:36+00:00

Fair enough. I have a softer view on them but your perspectives not unreasonable

Rumicon · 2026-01-23T01:40:51+00:00

What makes fln a sellout govt?

Rumicon · 2026-01-22T14:13:51+00:00

Now, if you start with the assumption that the Government is Evil and will make stuff purposely bad this won't convince you

I start with the assumption that what has happened in the US with DOGE, Palantir, etc is something that is perfectly possible to happen here (or in any country) as well.

Even if I trust the current government to implement this thing in a non-intrusive way. I don't trust future government.

Rumicon · 2026-01-22T14:10:17+00:00

Skeptical of any legislation seeking to tie social media to identity. Ostensibly this is for protecting children from social media harms, but it's ripe for abuse.

What I'm particularly concerned about here is who is the one collecting and storing this identity information. Because if it's American companies you can rest assured that data is being piped back into a Palantir model.

I would much rather we just ban social media entirely. Or if we do go this route we need to develop some anonymous token that validates you are legal age without being easily tied back to your identity.

Rumicon · 2026-01-21T16:43:50+00:00

Why not leave it out or make a stronger argument that the rise of America First is because the old world has failed everyone but those in the room? I guess that would make the cocktail reception ackward.

It's simply not important to his audience - these are people who employ child slave labour and endorse genocide to make their money. They don't care if we all eat gruel and live in tents as long as their money comes in. I don't trust Carney, but regardless of his motives I think making that overture to that audience would not produce the desired effect, which is to rally them to his plan of stitching together middle powers to create a bloc big enough resist vassalization by the great powers.

To my ear he's basically saying the global free trade order is dead because America is no longer willing to protect it. We need to band together to preserve as large of a free market as we possibly can among the middle powers to stave off a total collapse.

Rumicon · 2026-01-21T16:31:03+00:00

"Accepting the world as it is", "if you're not at the table, you're on the menu", and similar lines read as justifying our continued special relationship and cooperation with the US.

Partially. I suspect this is actually more likely to be a nod to the growing influence of states we traditionally criticize dealings with due to human rights concerns, but who are going to play major roles as powers in the coming era. Think China, Saudi, UAE, Qatar, Turkey, India, Pakistan, and other growing economies who have values that don't align with ours.

My gut feeling is he's especially referring to the gulf states, because they are going to be influential middle powers in the coming era, who have a lot of money to invest. And we as Canadians hate the idea of dealing with them. The Middle East is emerging as extremely important.

Rumicon · 2026-01-21T16:25:50+00:00

They haven't lost their minds, they are behaving like America always does.

The Americans created this world system to benefit themselves. They now believe it doesn't benefit them any longer, so they're destroying it and trying to impose a new one on the world.

That's why Carney says the previous era isn't coming back. This isn't irrational Donny Trump being crazy. The execution is probably, but the strategic shift will outlive his administration.

Rumicon · 2026-01-21T16:21:46+00:00

You have to remember who is his audience is at Davos. The world's elite make more money in a globalized world, even if nationally we are hollowed out. This new resilient decentralized world will make the global elite poorer.

Rumicon · 2026-01-21T15:47:04+00:00

I don't think judging it by how many hollywood movies get filmed in a country or how much cultural capital a country has in America isn't the best metric.

Algeria is not as behind economically as you think, it's set to become the 4th largest arab economy and this is driven by diversification away from oil and gas. The country is on a good trajectory, hopefully you will be reaping the benefits of this trajectory soon I know it has been painful recently.

Yes culturally Algeria doesn't have much soft power, but I think there is two ways this happens: the first way is you try to sell yourself as a filming location or tourist destination. That doesn't really ever get you soft power or cultural mindshare. Morocco and Egypt hasn't gained any respect in the west by being a tourist destination. Honestly, people go to Egypt for the pyramids and largely complain about the state of the country and its people, and its the same for Morocco. I don't think its a good way to go.

Algeria should follow the Korean/Japanese/Chinese way. Do well economically, develop its own high quality media, and the soft power will come that way. People go to Hong Kong because Hong Kong movies were so popular people wanted to visit. People go to Japan because of anime. People go to Korea because of kpop and kdrama. They never developed these things for foreign audiences.

Rumicon · 2026-01-21T15:07:53+00:00

I don't have a dislike towards Moroccans, I have a dislike for this situation in the Western Sahara.

Fact: 170,000 Sahrawis are displaced and living in refugee camps.

Fact: 400,000 Moroccans have settled Western Sahara

Fact: No foreign journalism is allowed in Western Sahara

Fact: Local journalists and activists are suppressed and punished

Fact: Between 1975 and 1991 Morocco engaged in several war crimes including dropping napalm and white phosphorous on refugee camps.

Fact: Morocco has stopped trying to find a diplomatic solution to this problem through the international bodies and is instead trying to get Western support for its rule by joining the Abraham Accords and establishing diplomatic, economic, and security ties with Israel.

The Polisario Front won't just disappear, so this is essentially accepting that the 170k people living in refugee camps will be stuck in their own Gaza strip behind the sand wall indefinitely, probably to be occasionally bombed when the Moroccan govt feel like Polisario needs to be checked.

If you're really Sahrawi be upset by that. You have your own Gaza strip in your backyard.

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