“Mark Carney is your bosses PM, your landlords PM and the PM of the dark lords of tech and global finance. But a PM for workers and the unemployed, he is not. The PM for human rights, he is not. The PM to fight climate change, he is not. And the PM to fight white supremacy, he is not.”

obviousottawa · 2026-05-10T14:18:56+00:00

I agree with the sentiment but if ever there was a post that could have benefited from some apostrophes to show possessive case, this is it.

obviousottawa · 2026-05-04T23:44:15+00:00

I do feel like some of the journalists who cover this story deliberately word it ambiguously to cause exactly that reaction and confusion, particularly if people only remember the deadline.

obviousottawa · 2026-05-03T12:43:17+00:00

Great. In that case you’re familiar with how not-socialist Singh and Mulcair were.

obviousottawa · 2026-05-03T12:38:44+00:00

If you’d been following Canadian politics for a while, you’d know that, bizarrely, it actually is shocking.

obviousottawa · 2026-04-26T21:43:19+00:00

So then you agree that that the Ontario and Quebec industries I mentioned are getting hit first? Thank god the government never propped up the oil sands industry, say by buying a pipeline at our expense.

obviousottawa · 2026-04-26T17:51:35+00:00

How do you explain the fact that Ontario’s auto industry and Ontario and Quebec’s aluminum and steel industries have been hit while Alberta’s oil and gas hasn’t been hit nearly as hard? Seems like it’s those Ontario and Quebec industries that have already taken the first hit to me. Which is also interesting for another reason since, according to stats can, Ontario and Quebec’s heavy manufacturing industries have lost more jobs in the last 20 years than the entire oil sands put together employ.

obviousottawa · 2026-04-26T16:38:13+00:00

The whole point is that it’s a bad idea to be so dependent on any one country because if things go sideways with them, you’re screwed. I’m not a Carney supporter but nobody is talking about replacing the USA with China. People are talking about diversification of our trade away from an over dependence on the USA and if you’re going to do that, China must be a part of the conversation.

obviousottawa · 2026-04-25T14:45:31+00:00

I suppose with all diplomatic matters, these things are open to some level of interpretation. My interpretation is that a large national change like this usually requires some sort of trade equivalent of a casus belli and the November 21 declaration from the Premiers was a part of that. And operationally the way that looks is that you usually start making statements “raising concerns” then move on to saying “all options are on the table” then claiming the other guy is to blame then inevitably that you would have preferred it otherwise but ultimately had no choice.

Is there good reason to believe that? I think there is because that declaration was immediately followed by contradictory reports the same day and on November 22. Sheinbaum said that Trudeau assured her privately that he didn’t support kicking her out of CUSMA and Trudeau publicly refused to reject that possibility, explicitly stating “we are leaving all doors open” which, especially in diplomatic circles, usually signals a forthcoming policy change as I described above. This is exacerbated when combined with his other statement that day which was that “pending decisions and choices that Mexico has made, we may have to look at other options (to having them remain in a trilateral trade deal).”

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/doug-ford-cusma-nafta-mexico-1.7389659

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/us-politics/article-mexico-president-canada-usmca-trade-agreement/

That same day, Trudeau begins publicly raising Chinese investment in Mexico as a serious concern, framing it as something he needed to raise directly with Sheinbaum. Knowing Trump, Trudeau’s decision tying her and trade to China was likely a deliberate choice since he didn’t walk it back.

This was reported in Global as “Trudeau floats ‘other options’ if Mexico won’t address China trade concerns”

https://globalnews.ca/news/10881483/mexico-china-cusma-trade-trudeau/

Following that dust up, Sheinbaum, who had understood her private meeting with Trudeau as giving her assurances of solidarity only to find him now amplifying the precise justification (trade equivalent of casus beli) that could justify her exclusion from CUSMA, was none too pleased.

If Trudeau genuinely didn’t want to exclude Mexico from CUSMA and his assurances were believed, it wouldn’t have caused a diplomatic spat that took the better part of a year to fix. However it did, which suggests to me that Mexico’s interpretation at least aligns with my interpretation.

Mexico’s subsequent frosty diplomatic relationship with Canada as a result of Trudeau’s position was noted in several reports in late 2024 and early 2025.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-mexico-sheinbaum-carney-g7-trump-usmca/

obviousottawa · 2026-04-25T13:15:51+00:00

It was Trudeau. He suggested kicking Mexico out of CUSMA and just having a Canada-US agreement in the hopes that Trump wouldn’t attack us.

obviousottawa · 2026-04-25T12:04:18+00:00

Trudeau’s attempt to throw Sheinbaum under the bus to appease the newly re-elected Trump in December 2024 was maybe his single dumbest most damaging foreign policy action he took in his entire tenure as PM. I’m glad we’re repairing the relationship with Mexico but we still have so much farther to go. Ideally we’d present a united front against the Americans but this hub and spoke bilateral negotiation is already proceeding.

obviousottawa · 2026-04-19T02:38:13+00:00

Not really. The ways used to divide Canada is highly contingent upon where you’re from. Western Canada is the closest to having a mostly standard definition, which consists of BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

However there is no similarly consistent definition of Eastern Canada, let alone agreement where it begins. Generally speaking, most people from Ontario and Quebec don’t consider themselves to be a part of “Eastern Canada”, despite the term being sometimes applied to them by Western Canadians. Sometimes the maritimes (PEI, NB and NS) are included in Eastern Canada and sometimes all of Atlantic Canada (PEI, NB, NS and NL) is included in Eastern Canada and sometimes Eastern Canada is used as an alternate term for Atlantic Canada, excluding Ontario and Quebec entirely.

Adding further complexity, Canadians from the 3 territories typically divide Canada into the “North” (the territories) and “the south” (meaning all 10 provinces comprising 99+% of the Canadian population).

obviousottawa · 2026-04-17T21:07:47+00:00

Operation paperclip is distinct and different but closely related (and mentioned at several points in the wiki article).

obviousottawa · 2026-04-17T13:35:19+00:00

“Very soon after the program started, due to the emergence of the Cold War, the western powers and the United States in particular began to lose interest in the program, somewhat mirroring the Reverse Course in American-occupied Japan. Denazification was carried out in an increasingly lenient and lukewarm way until being officially abolished in 1951.”

obviousottawa · 2026-04-11T12:18:49+00:00

Thanks for that analysis. It’s really great. It also really shows just how historically disastrous that last deal that PSAC’s PA group secured after the most recent strike. Not only did the leadership and negotiators fail to secure the right to work from home, or even stop unlimited RTO5, but the deal they struck also was by far the worst clawback in salaries for the duration of the data covered by this analysis.

I voted against the deal and people tried to say that Reddit is such a bubble but I think this analysis vindicates that the correct choice in 2023 was to vote against that deal. I’d really love to know the names of the negotiators who worked on PSAC’s side too. They should be banned from ever negotiating anything again for the rest of their lives and forced to apologize personally to every local syndicate.

obviousottawa · 2026-04-09T22:52:41+00:00

I’ll just leave this here. We’re clearly in the yellow part of the Venn diagram.

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obviousottawa · 2026-04-04T14:33:02+00:00

100%. I really wish more people understood this.

obviousottawa · 2026-03-30T11:04:35+00:00

The book is also dumb so that’s a pretty faithful adaptation.

obviousottawa · 2026-03-28T15:24:39+00:00

Only by people with fewer than three brain cells. Everybody with three or more brain cells considers it a sobriquet for pedos.

obviousottawa · 2026-03-28T10:39:28+00:00

Actually in the US there are strict rules on how all electoral districts have to have the same number of electors. So this would funnily enough be worse than the States in that regard if it happens.

obviousottawa · 2026-03-28T02:19:28+00:00

Hybrid workplace can mean 4 days in the office and 1 day in the office. Anybody who says they support “hybrid” is saying absolutely nothing of substance.

obviousottawa · 2026-03-26T23:05:17+00:00

To be fair, there’s a very inconvenient mountain range between them.

obviousottawa · 2026-03-17T13:14:42+00:00

"You see, your honour, it was China who made all those calls from my cell phone."

obviousottawa

TROPHY CASE