All jokes about Doug Ford’s expertise in paying outrageous fees for cancelling contracts, this was the right move. The mistake was to pay a fee at all. Starlink, as witnessed in Ukraine, and Musks political shenanigans is an unreliable state-adjacent company, that is taking illegal and hostile actions against Canada under false pretext. Breach of contract, force majeur take your pick. We owe them nothing.
Great news! Stop buying them.
I have to agree. These are deeply disturbing concessions for zero benefit to Canadians. I hope Carney isn’t a total fuckup and sellout, but hope is draining fast after those egregious mistakes.
Matt is right, but it’s awfully convenient to say it now and not when his show was popularising Fox on it’s rise to dominance, despite being a fascist shitbag TV network. 30 years too late Matt.
The concern of national interest that this article wilfully ignored is that full electrification of Canada is decades away. Those gas powered cars and trucks Montrealers see out their windows have lifespans. A car sold today is on the road for 15 years, easy. Fossil fuel infrastructure has momentum.
The national interest of pipelines is that we could supply ourselves, but don’t. Eastern Canada gets most of its oil from American and International markets. Eastern refineries buy Saudi oil. We have fossil fuel pipelines that feed eastern Canada from the US. They can be turned off by a backstabbing US. The US could blockade our ports under any false pretext. This is a strategic risk. As much as our most Electric province, Québec likes to tout electricity, if we turned off the oil today it would be chaos in the streets. They have childish delusions if they think they are ready for the end of oil. Other provinces are even less prepared. Full electrification is an existential imperative. We aren’t ready for it, yet.
In addition to our short term needs measured in decades, our allies, like Europe, who are leaders in electrification are still forced to buy oil from Russians who are also an Imperialist threat. Europe is also at least decades away from decarbonizing. An eastern pipeline feeds Europe Canadian oil and starves Russia while we get our shit together and electrify.
People love to say the US needs Canadian oil. What if they suddenly didn’t? An imperialist America could liberate Venezuela and cut us off from our main customer. Like Europe learned to regret depending on Russia as a supplier, we may well regret depending on the US as a customer. Economically we could not recover.
Self-sufficiency. Aid allies, starve rivals. That is the national interest of pipelines.
Edit: More than almost anyone, I believe getting off fossil fuels is an existential imperative. There is hardly a greater cause for action and urgency. Just keep in mind the danger and destruction caused by not ending its life gracefully.
The ecosystem and humanity’s legacy would be done a great service if we just stopped fossil fuels today, cold-turkey. No one thinks of the costs of doing so. How many lives lost to an ultra-abrupt transition? It’s an ugly math and I’m not comfortable with it either.
In my mind, the national focus should be on electrifying the country. This means more mass transit. Like, Chinese levels of Transit Construction. Let’s get our Aluminium and Steel working for Canadians now. Let’s get away from cars, even electric ones. Lets solve our housing crisis with Passivehouse’esque mid density, walkable, bikeable, livable cities fed by electric trains, from local trams to high speed bullet trains. Let’s fucking GOOOOOOOO!
Until that’s in place, let’s maximize the value of our fossil fuel legacy to survive long enough to get there.
I deeply appreciate the trepidation/cynicism to call it good news, but this is actually good news.
If their father is this stupid, there is a good chance the kids will be too stupid to figure this out when they’re older.
And as an armed service member, I betrayed my oath to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That’s why mommy is in a gulag.
Now stop crying. Who wants ice cream?
My coffee tastes better today. I wonder what the secret ingredient is?
So…the American way?
Username checks out.
Reddit? Ew!
And the very definition of unsustainable, thus doomed to be rubble that the desert like conditions will bury and preserve, thus creating the great finds of Archeologists in future millenia assuming humans survive long enough to still have Archeologists. Like the next Egypt.
“indefinitely”
There may come a time when our peoples can heal and healthy relations can resume. It won’t be in my lifetime.
If by a miracle the fascists are all gone and the Dems sweep the house, the senate and the supreme court and the guilty are finally punished and ICE agents jailed in their own prison camps, I still won’t won’t work, play or purchase American.
I can’t forgive the US where so many wanted this, willingly and knowingly. They were warned. They knew. When the ugly was in their face they cheered and asked for more. I can’t support people like that. Ever.
Our Prime Minister is a Goldman Sachs alumni, so maybe this all goes terribly wrong.
I’ll repeat a comment from another thread.
There is no deal in EU or Japan. Trump is con artist. A serial fraudster. He is not bound by any court or the rule of law or congress. He is a proven bad faith actor. The US is a bad faith actor.
These “deals” with Japan and the EU aren’t worth the ink used in the signature. EU and Japan know this as does the US. This is three lying parties, staring each other in the face, all knowing everyone is lying. Japan and the EU are lying to buy time to de-integrate economies as gracefully as possible. Trump is lying in that this deal won’t be renegged asap and an even shittier deal will be attempted.
Nobody, and I mean nobody is fucking investing in Trump’s America. Everyone is moving as fast as possible to divest from the US to domestic for strategic needs and reliable trade partners for everything else. No one would risk further entanglements with a bad faith actor bound by nothing but Antisocial Personality Disorder and a sexual desire for children.
Climate Crisis? Cost of living crisis? Fuck you, corporate landlords have bills to pay and banks want their money back. Get back to your commutes. The markets demand it.
Now let’s give the space to the soon-to-be-tazered economists to chime in about how efficient the market is.
It’s a stupid assumption of capitalism that anything unprofitable isn’t worth doing. Where the market fails to provide, government can step in. Government used to build social housing. There is an intense demand for futureproof housing, like resilient passivehouse styled housing, that private won’t do because it’s not profitable and government won’t do because they forgot they could do anything if they really wanted. A world dominated by energy concerns and climate change necessitates this.
We will dither until there is blood in the streets.
We’re way past “legal” mattering anymore.