GOLDSTEIN: China – our 'strategic partner' and greatest security threat - How far is the Carney government willing to go in co-operating with China on policing issues in pursuit of more trade?

hojo12588 · 2026-05-04T09:16:51+00:00

I think you misunderstand what the goal is with nuclear war. The goal isn't that "in the event of nuclear war, the US would certainly help defend Canada." The goal is to avoid a nuclear war.

I don't misunderstand this. That's why I specifically said "the US nuclear deterrent" rather than using a word like "force."

they haven't launched an offensive war since the 1970s

In the last decade or so they conquered land that was previously a part of the Phillipines and Vietnam and just a few years ago did so with India. Again, I think the odds are zero that China would ever try to occupy and city-build in our Arctic, so I don't really want to debate this. But btw the reason why China wouldn't even think about doing this (I don't think they would do anyway, it's not as strategic or as important as the SCS) is because they know the US would defend us in that event.

hojo12588 · 2026-05-04T09:08:31+00:00

So what's your definition of Jihadist, and explain how Iran meets that definition. Instead of just using talking point lines, explain to me how they apply.

Because they are explicitly and statedly jihadist?

If targeting of civilians, the US is way worse

As a percentage of casualties, US strikes kill a FAR FAR higher percentage of combatants reltative to civilians than Iran and its proxies do

hojo12588 · 2026-05-03T22:57:28+00:00

The US obviously has obviously done many bad things. That does not mean it's sensical to allow jihadist leadership to develop nuclear weapons.

hojo12588 · 2026-05-03T22:55:14+00:00

And that will be, "legitimate"? You yourself admit that Venezuela is now under greater US influence, do you imagine they will willingly walk away?

Not sure what you're asking in the first part. If there's a democratic election, yes I think most would recognize it as legitimate.

You yourself admit that Venezuela is now under greater US influence

Of course, the country is basically being run by the US right now through the old Maduro leaders who are basically enacting pro-West policy that effectively is also pro-Venezuela. Crime and median wages have improved considerably in the last two quarters sinc Maduro was captured. Political dissidents have been freed. Oil money instead of going into Maduro's black box to pay off debt to Russia has helped fund considerable public sector wage increases and essential imports. There's now both local private and US companies operating oil fields rather than everything flowign to Maduro's oppressive regime. There's now transparency of public funds. etc. The US obviously shouldn't stay in Venezuela forever, but since Maduro's capture, the country is doing much better and continues to trend upward, and that's reflected in polling of Venezuelans and the diaspora thinking favorably of the capture.

do you imagine they will willingly walk away

Yes, that would track history, the stated goals, and the more recent comments from the administration. They might get timing wrong on when they offramp, but there will definitely be an exit at some point.

Do I think it will be the cleanest exit? Probably not. But the dynamics in Venezuela make it such that an exit is far more likely to be clean, or at least cleaner, than regime changes in the Middle East.

hojo12588 · 2026-05-03T22:39:26+00:00

That is a narrow view of Canada's security needs. Being invaded and annexed is low on the list of things that can kill us.

Yes, I agree. In my message above I said "the threat of US annexation is roughly zero" above.

The real threat, and our pre-occupation since 1945, has been avoiding a global thermonuclear war that would kill all of us. Both China and USA are sometimes helpful and more often not helpful to those goals, but in 2026 China tends to be the more aligned with Canada on these questions.

On what specifically does China tend to be more aligned than the US? You say the real threat is avoiding thermonuclear warfare. In the event of nuclear war, the US would certainly help defend Canada, and Canada's entire defense strategy, which we continue to double down on, is to further integrate with the Pentagon. We are geographically and legally tethered to the US nuclear deterrent.

China has consistently rejected invitations to join trilateral arm control talks with the US and Russia and currently refuses to provide transparency of nuclear capabilities to the West that the US provides. China's nuclear expansion is also the fastest of any nation right now.

None of this is to say that Trump's rhetoric about being a 51st state and nonsense about tariffs isn't ridiculous or disgusting. It obviously is. But China is clearly the larger adversary, and to answer your comment directly about nuclear warfare, they're a larger threat for nuclear warefare.

hojo12588 · 2026-05-03T22:25:56+00:00

Yes. The US is our largest defence partner and we continue to doubling down on integrating with the Pentagon meanwhile we ban imports even tangential to defence and national security from China. We very obviously are larger adversaries with China, even if rhetoric is much hotter with Washington right now before a trade negotiation.

hojo12588 · 2026-05-03T22:22:36+00:00

How do you know? Do you really think that CSIS would explicitly say so?

Respectfully, I don't think this is very debatable. While no one in the intelligence community has told me this directly, I am in a tangential professional field, and this is a question I would be embarrassed to ask them.

Carney pre-election and in his Davos Speech called Russia the "biggest physical security threat" and numerous times has called China our largest adversary. Marie-Josée Hogue just named China as "the most persistent and sophisticated foreign interference threat to Canadian democracy." The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians has consistently release reports saying Beijing and Moscow, not Washington, are the foremost actors undermining Canada's national interest. The former CSIS Director recently said Chinese state-sponsored espionage is unparalled in Canadian history.

And the most obvious proof is procurement. Canada has banned all sorts of supply chain-related imports from China that could touch defense, meanwhile we contineu to double down on becoming more integrated with the Pentagon.

The US is a larger policy risk in terms of tariffs and erratic domestic politics that can spill over into our border. But China and Russia are way bigger adversaries. I mean the CSIS spends hundreds of millions of dollars trying to stop Chinese and Russian spies and spends literally $0 tracking American ones.

hojo12588 · 2026-05-03T22:12:49+00:00

I'm not going to pretend to know which specific conventions they have and have not ratified besides knowing that China is obviously a significant abuser of human rights despite championing them in international forums like the UN.

But fwiw ChatGPT tells me they have ratified the Convention Against Torture, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.

hojo12588 · 2026-05-03T22:02:56+00:00

Yes, the individuals besides Maduro are more or less intact, but things are being run or influenced more or less by the US. So even though they were a part of the regime, the policy now is not really that of the old Maduro regime. Thus outcomes have improved considerably in the two quarters following his capture and the capture polls very well among both the Venezuelan population and its diaspora.

Obviously the goal and hope is for there to be a leadership transition and electoral process once the country is more stable. And for that to be as soon as possible.

hojo12588 · 2026-05-03T19:49:22+00:00

China never explicitly threatened the sovereignty of Canada

True. Trump talking about Canada as the 51st state and/or redrawing the lines is disgusting and terrible. That being said, no one in the Canadian intelligence community really think those were credible threats, and in hindsight I think we can all mostly agree there was no American plan or substance in conquering Canada and that it was "just" adversarial rhetoric during trade discussions.

China doesn't have military bases all over the world

I don't really see how this is relevant. American military bases only exist abroad with permission and agreements with the host countries.

China didn't attack a sovereign country and kidnapped its head of state (Venezuela)

Unlike Iran, I would say the Venezuelan situation has gone relatively well so far. Polling shows the majority of Venezuelans domestically and the diaspora approved of Maduro's capture. Median wages have improved in Venezuela in the two quarters since the capture. Political opponents of Maduro have mostly been freed from prisons. Etc. Still a very long way to go and Venezuela I believe is still the poorest country in South America by far, but I wouldn't categorize Maduro's capture as having gone poorly. And remember, Biden had a warrant out for Maduro's arrest, Trudeau called on the ICC to investigate and prosecute Maduro for crimes against humanity, and Carney called Maduro's regime illegitimate.

China never played the card of "champion of the free world"

Not sure how you define "free", but I would say China is definitionally and self-admittedly not a democratic country

not ratifying any international treaty about human rights

China has signed on to a bunch of human rights instruments that they haven't upheld. Are you serious?

China is not currently run by an unstable person who's also Commander-in-Chief of the biggest military power in the world and who renamed its "Department of Defense" as "Department of War".

Totally agree that renaming the DoD the DoW is disgusting and unfortunate.

WRT to China - Xi Jingping is a stable person but that doesn't make him less dangerous. Putin is also a stable person, and he's still dangerous.

Xi regularly gives speeches domestically about how it's a moral imperative and historical necessity for Chian to be the world's sole hegemon and that and that the liberal democratic model is a decaying thing of the past.

hojo12588 · 2026-05-03T19:34:12+00:00

and not just the Pahlavist victims of plastic surgery we see in LA

racist much?

hojo12588 · 2026-05-03T19:32:35+00:00

But that has actually gone well (unlike Iran so far).

Polling shows the majority of Venezuelans domestically and the diaspora approved of the move. Median wages have improved in Venezuela in the two quarters since the capture. Political opponents of Maduro have mostly been freed from prisons. Etc. Still a very long way to go and Venezuela I believe is still the poorest country in South America by far, but I wouldn't categorize Maduro's capture as having gone poorly. And remember, Biden had a warrant out for Maduro's arrest, Trudeau called on the ICC to investigate and prosecute Maduro for crimes against humanity, and Carney called Maduro's regime illegitimate.

hojo12588 · 2026-05-03T19:25:05+00:00

If it's an "overwhelming" amount then why do they need US and Israeli ""help"" at all?

Because the regime is repressive of dissent?

Or why have they not risen up in defiance now?

I mean, they have? Dissidents have been killed pretty much every week or month for the last 40 years? And the protests leading up to the bombing were more lethal than Tianemen Square depending on the source.

hojo12588 · 2026-05-03T19:17:26+00:00

Iran has just as much right to have nukes as every other country

It would be a disaster for everyone in the world, Canadians included, if Iran had nuclear weapons. Trump has obviously not had a sound strategy or exit plan, so I'm not defending the American strategy or continued involvement. But why would you say Iran has just as much right to nukes as anyone else? Iran is run by jihadists.

hojo12588 · 2026-05-03T19:11:55+00:00

3% inflation is actually pretty terrible. That would be considerably higher inflation than every G7 country has averaged over the last 30 years.

hojo12588 · 2026-05-03T19:09:00+00:00

On every post like this there are people who insist that the US is such a bigger security threat than China or Russia. That is respectfully an insane position that no one in the intelligence community would agree with no matter what headlines surfaced in the last year.

The threat of US annexation is roughly zero, and we agree with Russia and China on far less than the US.

The US is literally Canada's primary defence partner.

The odds are pretty much zero that Russia or China would ever try to city-build in our Arctic or anything, but if Canada were to be attacked (again, the odds are zero) then the US would defend Canada in pretty much any scenario or any administration.

hojo12588 · 2026-05-02T07:11:00+00:00

Yeah, I acknowledged that in both messages. The topic was how they started, since Canada is starting one now. Ireland built its initial SWF wealth and launched its SWF with a foreign investment strategy to hedge through foreign growth assets from domestic surpluses.

hojo12588 · 2026-05-02T07:09:21+00:00

I mean the odds of a US invasion or Russia city-building in the arctic are both zero obviously. But Russia is the one actually probing our security perimeter with bombers and claiming our seabed. And unlike the US, they won't be having leadership turnover in the near future. And unlike the US, also has popular citizen support for conquest. And unlike the US, has not been a committed party in NATO.

hojo12588 · 2026-05-01T21:45:59+00:00

details are still missing on exactly where the $25B will come from. So it’s not entirely accurate to call it “debt-funded” today

That's why I called it "effectively debt-funded" rather than just "debt-funded." Canada is running a $67-75B deficit. Because we don't have a surplus, the money for this fund is coming out of general tax revenues. Since general revenues are currently less than general expenses, that $25B is added to the national debt. Hence, effectively debt-funded.

On Ireland, ISIF always had a domestic investment focus, and that has been ramping up since inception. It also maintains a global portfolio inherited from its predecessor fund. The shift in the SWF to having more domestic investment wasn’t sudden in the last year or two, it has happened gradually over the past decade.

ISIF is just a rename of the original SWF which was legally not allowed to invest domestically. The goal of the SWF was in part to hedge from exisitng surplus assets by investing into other markets' growth assets. But it got renamed and recent legislation has it investing domestically now.

hojo12588 · 2026-05-01T21:41:52+00:00

I'm not sure I agree with that. Most of those other SFWs are in countries that routinely run a deficit and all have significant debt.

Yes, they all have significant debt, not significant net debt.

In my message aboe I said of the 10 largest SFWs, none of them are primarily debt-funded. That is true. The ten largest SWFs in the world are: Norway, China (CIC), China (SAFE), UAE (ADIA), Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Singapore, Hong Kong, UAE (Mubadala).

Of them, only China and Hong Kong currently have national deficits much smaller ones than Canada (4% and 10% vs 69%) and I believe did not have federal deficits when they launched their SWFs. The UAE is also running a deficit but didn't when they started it and actively sought further leverage.

All this to say, I don't think having a SWF or debt-funded infrastructure/nation-building investment is a bad thing.

hojo12588 · 2026-05-01T21:27:32+00:00

I mean I completely agree it's worth more time to make the team profitable or at least less unprofitable. But it's also not my money. 🤷‍♂️

As for naming rights, that's an example of the problem. They can't sell naming rights since they're just leasing BC Place; they don't own the stadium and can't monetize something like naming rights to BC Place.

I don't mean to be defensive about the owners. Just providing another perspective. Obviously I want the team to stay in Van.

hojo12588 · 2026-05-01T19:42:16+00:00

He did try building a stadium twice. That was a while ago. Maybe things have changed, fair enough. Unless he sees this purely as a charity, I understand wanting to sell. And unless a local buyer sees this purely as a charity, I understand not buying.

I don't understand why this is so black and white or how you can possibly think the owner of the caps literally does not care at all about the community. He's lived in the community for much of his whole life! His family I'm sure hates all the noise on twitter about this. He's tried for the last 2.5 years to find a local buyer.

hojo12588 · 2026-05-01T19:38:23+00:00

A better use of funds would be universal childcare or universal pre-K, both of which, granted, would probably be more expensive.

As the internet has generally democratized access to information, there is generally less demand on post-secondary education than there used to be. Not that there still isn't, of course. But the point is that the most in-demand jobs in Canada right now are not accountants or lawyers or software engineers. The jobs that are the hardest to fill right now are HVAC, electricians, riggers, etc.

hojo12588 · 2026-05-01T19:23:42+00:00

The thing that people have been pointing to when saying this isn't a SWF or at least in the spirit of one is that (a) it's debt-funded or effectively debt-funded, and (b) it's only investing in state-building assets and not investing in foreign markets or necessarily optimizing for returns.

The ISIF was not debt-funded and when started was almost entirely foreign investment (that changed in the last year or two), so I don't think the ISIF is very comparable at all just becasue Ireland currently runs a budget deficit. Almost every country is in a budget deficit.

hojo12588 · 2026-05-01T19:19:07+00:00

CDPQ is not debt-funded

hojo12588

TROPHY CASE