Canada Delenda Est

Foreign observers might have been surprised to see a restoration of the very regime that has contributed so much to Canada’s decline, but Canadians and anyone who knows Canada were not. Surely the Conservative Party’s weak-kneed leadership hurt them, but there is effectively no difference between the two parties. Both parties spent the campaign making promises that are impossible to keep, while broadcasting an anodyne mantra of hollow Canadian symbolism. Every party in Canada represents the same globalist status quo and policy slate that infects all Western “democracies.”

Even if the “Conservatives” had won there would have been no significant policy shift. The Federal government would go on being the biggest employer in the land, third world immigrants would continue to get waved-in by the millions, and suppression of speech and thought would continue unabated with the support of all Elite institutions.

The virile instinct in Canada has all but atrophied at the hand of the nagging classes of harridans and “nice lady” conservatives, hen-pecking any errant man into submission with the threat of ostracism. Politicians of every stripe pay homage to the universal Den Mother and her trans/refugee handmaidens. Yet the post-national utopia (of which Canada is a textbook case) is a construct of anti-reality that cannot withstand the forces of causation. So how does Canada persist in this state?

The short answer is that Canada’s (diminishing) prosperity is still underwritten by American generosity – namely the asymmetric advantage the former has in trade and services. The Canadian government can borrow at lower rates than the biggest economy in the world because of preferential access to its capital markets. It can defer military expenditures indefinitely because of US security guarantees. It has a free and permanent put option to sell (many of) its wares to Americans while applying excise taxes on them in return. It is, in effect, a client that consumes the largesse of its benefactor while doing every in its power to thwart its patron’s revival.

Canada is the new Cold War Cuba – a vanguard of gay-race communism at America’s doorstep, showing us a bleak future where the surveillance state maintains the illusion of harmony and prosperity through enforced ignorance. Even modest dissent is cast as extremism and snuffed out with Minority Report-level interference. Meanwhile hordes of the poorest and least assimilable are transplanted to form a permanent client class for the Elites, and provide them with unlimited slave-like labor.

Canada’s example is not unique, it is merely the most successful case and the closest to our doorstep. If Canada is a model to the world of the modern globohomo Uber-State then the maintenance of this illusion, along with the belief in its natural ability to persist, is a monument to the entire progressive enterprise of dehumanization, atomization and State control. For this there is but one cure.

Canada Delenda Est… Canada must be destroyed.

A few qualifications are in order. I am, in fact, both a Canadian citizen and an American citizen and spend significant amounts of time in both countries. Moreover, my invocation of the Catonian philippic is not a call for the actual physical or geographical destruction or dismemberment of the country. No need to plow the land with salt: the invective is metaphorical. Canada’s status as paragon of globalist order must be toppled and the false light that emanates therefrom extinguished. This should be a top priority for the Trump Administration not simply pour encourager les autres but also to send a strong counter-signal: causation is still alive and well.

The foregoing Canadian election shows that regime change is unlikely to occur natively. There are two contributing factors, one cultural one economic, and I have already alluded to them. The cultural revolt needed to overthrow the status quo is a latent force in Canada. We caught of glimpse of such anger with the COVID trucker tevolt. It suffers from a “you first” conundrum (called the Assurance Game in game theory – a sort of inverse Prisoner’s Dilemma) whereby no party wishes to oppose the dominant power without assurances of collective action. Things will have to get a lot worse before Canadians join the fray against tyranny.

But aren’t things already bad? Haven’t we witnessed a deterioration of civic life in the wake of COVID and unlimited immigration? Haven’t home prices already reached escape velocity already? Aren’t Canada’s urban centers already magnets for international organized crime, protected by Liberal politicians and their ethnic enclaves?

The answer is yes, but not for everyone. Boomers still sustain their plush existence – free from the effects of their disastrous embrace of multiculturalism. Favored ethnic client-groups are maintained in a state of “contentment” through the division of spoils to their leaders. The government payroll – the ultimate Rube Goldberg Machine – churns out voters for the Elites (often called the Laurentians) while it transfers huge portions of its income tax to the Provinces in order to pay for the biggest ponzi scheme of all: “free” healthcare.

Which brings us to the second factor, despite a higher Debt-to-GDP ratio and a decade of stagnant per capita GDP growth, interest rates on Canadian government bonds are still lower than their US counterparts – something that, as a bond trader, beggars belief. Consumer debt levels are very high while Canadian industries struggle under the weight of regulation and taxation. In short, Canada’s economy is ripe for falling. What is advertised as a bulwark of democracy is merely a Potemkin village of progressive values, ready to topple like the facades of a Hollywood ghost-town in the wind. Making it fall should be one of the aims of the Trump Administration.

Canada’s position is precarious. Since nothing grows in Canada for 7 months of the year it relies on the US for food, despite having a variety of import tariffs on its own agricultural products. It relies on US capital markets to finance its corporations but prohibits its own banks from US ownership. The US is its biggest trading partner, but the reverse isn’t true. It’s manufacturing sector is almost completely dependent on the trade in automobiles – an arrangement that was established decades ago when the Big Three decided to arbitrage their healthcare liabilities by shipping plant jobs north.

While I would bet that President Trump will strike a deal rather than prolong any hostilities, there are many things that his government could do to bring the Canadian Elites to a reckoning. Make no mistake, the Democrats and other pawns of the globalist movement will fight him tooth and nail. They understand the stakes. If Canada can no longer pay for its massive welfare state and bloated civil service then the entire enterprise will waste away and the world will begin to see that such regimes are not sustainable.

What should Trump do?

Despite being sold on free trade as far back as 1988 there is no such thing in Canada. Any Canadian who has committed the cardinal sin of ordering consumer goods online from America knows this. The government applies an excise tax of around 30% to your package. This means that when the delivery gets to your door your package is held hostage until you pony-up money to release it from customs. No money, no package.

The “Free Trade Agreement” of 1988 really only covered trade in autos and manufactured parts. Since those have enormous capital costs the impact on GDP is huge and optically this makes “Free Trade” look like a huge bonus, if you’re an economist. As for the rest of the economy, there’s little reciprocity – agricultural goods like eggs (and many others) are subject to enormous import tariffs. Instead Canada has a Stalinist marketing-board system that set quotas and severely punishes producers who disobey. This system is in place to protect special interests in certain Provinces that would otherwise consider separating from the Federation.

Reciprocal trade is stymied in other ways through the Investment Canada Act. It prohibits US (and all foreign) investors from owning a controlling stake in industries like financial services, telecom and media. Defenders of this system recently argued that Canada does not prohibit foreign banks from operating but this is a specious argument. Any bank that is attempting to enter a foreign market does so by purchasing a local bank in the target jurisdiction and growing it. In fact that is precisely what Canadian banks did in the US with TD BankNorth and BMO Harris Bank. American banks are not permitted to do likewise in Canada. Ditto for Telecom and media companies.

The result for Canadians is a saturated domestic market with almost no room for growth and where competition is non-existent. It’s comical that the Elites (who, of course, are at the top of the banking, telecom and media industries) fear reciprocity as the “end of world”. Non protected industries like retail have survived and thrived in spite of having to compete with US companies. When Home Depot moved in Canadians did not see the disappearance of Canadian Tire, while both Rona and Home Hardware continue to exist as well.

Trump should begin by imposing fully reciprocal tariffs and competition laws and apply them retroactively. If Canada won’t open its banking sector to US banks then the US should penalize Canadian banks that control American ones. I’d recommend this level of reciprocity for all nations, not just Canada. The Trump Administration could easily lever any of the financial regulatory agencies to apply pressure, like the OCC, FTC, SEC and CFTC. Canadian banks have recently been investigated for money laundering in connection with foreign (read Indian and Chinese) organized crime and this could be an excellent fulcrum for exerting leverage. Simply denying or delaying USD clearing would bring them to their knees in seconds. Alternately, applying massive fines on account of the competitive asymmetry would force them to pay up before they can forum-shop for a Democratic judge to issue a nationwide injunction.

The same logic can be applied to Canada’s protected telecom and media companies. Canadian television and movies (with a few exceptions) are slop, suitable only for nursing homes or loud dental offices. While foreign markets will buy British or occasionally European shows, Canada’s writing and acting talent absconded to Hollywood, leaving only the dregs to produce media that no one will buy. Nonetheless the government’s Canadian content rules (along with the Investment Canada Act) ensure there is maximal employment in an industry that wouldn’t exist without State support. The FCC could make short work of this.

The most drastic option for the Trump Administration is to close the border. This has to be done with a real pretext. However, with the amount of fentanyl crossing the border – and given how porous the border is – this isn’t a high threshold to pass. The odds that illegals or terrorists are not crossing into the US on any given day is low. Homeland Security could easily find some infractions and use them to justify a complete shutdown. Even if a Democratic judge tried to issue a nationwide injunction the Administration should refuse enforcement as it would be quickly rejected on appeal.

The border wouldn’t need to be closed for a long period of time – that would just invite blowback. Instead the border can be closed for 24-hour periods. This can be done iteratively until it creates such a disruption in the regular flow of commerce and tourism so as to permanently restructure economic expectations. American businesses will quickly realize it is not worth the headache of doing business in Canada and will repatriate operations. Canadians will realize if they want to visit a non-frozen part of the world they will have to concede to US demands.

Of course there will be blowback even for short disruptions from Border State politicians – in the pay of corporate interests – who will call for trade to take precedence over American security and long-term prosperity. Ditto for tourist industries reliant on Snowbird travel. These can be easily dismissed by the Administration by calling for America First and “People, not profits.” Yes, irony is delicious.

Lastly, the Administration can sic its agencies on Canadian companies doing business in America, targeting them with regulatory scrutiny or worse. Stable planning is the sine qua non of any firm. Both of these proposals have the advantage of creating precipitous incentives by inducing financial and operational volatility for Canadian businesses. They will lean on their government to strike a deal without hesitation. Remove but stability and, hark, what accord follows.

The goal of the aforementioned policies is to induce a financial and fiscal crisis in Canada and bankrupt the government and Elite institutions. Currently the interest rates on Canadian government bonds are actually less than America’s despite having a higher (current and historical) debt-to-GDP ratio. While this smacks of market manipulation (they wouldn’t… would they?), Canada’s economy and financial sector are on thin ice. Create a liquidity crisis for their banks and the government will have to bail them out, causing rates to rise, defaults to soar, and hens to come home to roost.

Such a financial crisis would not only induce a fiscal crisis for the government but if allowed to persist over several months it would tear apart the fabric of the country itself. This is because Canada has a State-funded healthcare system where the responsibility to pay for it falls to the Provinces. The Provinces cannot carry such an engorged albatross around their neck so they perpetually rely on the Federal government for transfers. When this gravy train ends the entire system will collapse. This nearly happened in the mid 1990s. A severe recession forced the over-levered Federal government to curtail Provincial transfers. Quebec nearly separated and the Western Provinces also engaged in a revolt of their own. Both sides were eventually placated as commodity prices rose in the late 1990s and Federal tax receipts restored the division of spoils. There’s every reason to believe the state of the country is more precarious now and even a slight push might have the desired effect of causing open (non-violent) rebellion among the Provinces.

A fiscal/financial crisis will either be resolved quickly by concession to American demands, or it could take on a life of its own that will only be to Canada’s detriment. While the Laurentian Elites cower in their overpriced enclaves, they will have an uncontainable mutiny on their hands. Unable to fund their ethnic patronage networks, the Elites will be undone and patience among real Canadians will finally reach its long-awaited terminus. The Elites are NOT prepared to counter this level of widespread public outrage. They have no game plan and will make rash judgments that will further alienate them.

This agenda will have its push-back. Canadian banks might try to go to court to enjoin Executive agencies from applying fines or reciprocal competition, but pursuing litigation is lengthy and costly. Such an approach will only lengthen the pain, while allowing the Administration in DC to generate public support in favor of US jobs and fair treatment of US companies. Currently most Americans don’t give a second thought to Canada (and most likely can’t find it on a map) so the likelihood they would come out swinging on behalf of Canuck financial institutions is laughable. Likewise the Democrats, understanding what’s at stake in taking down a neighboring globalist regime, might attempt their own campaign in support of Canada. But they are already so busy protecting criminals nationwide, would they choose to overextend themselves on behalf of Canada’s big banks? Moreover, if the Administration’s trump card is “all Canada has to do is treat us fairly” it’s hard to imagine the Democrats being successful.

Toppling Canada’s anti-Western regime will push the thin edge of the wedge through the door. It will show that governments in support of multiculturalist self-destruction, foreign slave-labor, bloated bureaucracy and regulation, and other perversions of the natural order cannot last. The money has run out. China’s plan of armchair hegemony has been exposed. The Trump Administration, through a concerted and well-conceived plan, could bring reality (and causation) back to the Northern Hemisphere, and signal the same to the world.