This isn’t actually all that unusual. Most countries do most of their trade with their neighbouring countries for logistics reasons. To actually implement diversified trade would require the government enact policies preventing Canadian businesses from doing trade with the US, or maybe having export taxes or whatever. A business that can make money selling to the US isn’t going to just turn that money down, right? There would be an ongoing cost to maintain those policies, all to avoid a hypothetical future cost of diversifying the economy if that trading partner suddenly went insane.

Now there are things the government could do like developing infrastructure needed to make sure we have the capability to trade with other countries. Like a pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific for example. Perhaps more projects like this should’ve been done, but these kinds of things aren’t cheap and how much money do you spend to protect against future economic problems?

Also they could pursue trade agreements with other trading partners… and that happened too. There’s the CPTPP on the Pacific side and CETA with the EU. Unfortunately we’re still waiting on EU members ratify CETA, but not much we can do about that.

So yeah, it’s a lot of hindsight is 20/20 with this kind of thing. As with most things, the government could have done better, but they did do some things Ok. But having a neighbouring country suddenly batshit is always going to cause trade problems.

Sorry but my source for procurement doesn’t have that level of detail for the Gripen. It may be classified.

https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/search/?q=gripen

Trump won’t outlive the F35, but the distrust of the US will.

The US cut off military supplies to a country (Ukraine) during an active conflict. Trump did this as leverage in a negotiation. That’s a line that can’t be crossed, and he crossed it. There were no articles of impeachment, and most Americans didn’t pay it any mind. So this is how Americans do business now.

So we should expect the US to use military supplies as leverage in negotiations going forward. Using US equipment means CAF’s readiness is in constant peril for the foreseeable future. Currently it’s at the whims of a deranged old man. But it will always be a bargaining chip for future US Presidents.

The only way to ensure CAF readiness is to end the use of all US equipment. It’s not solely about Trump, it’s about what the US has become.

I think everyone is thinking the same way. I think the probability of the US invading is low, but there is a probability.

Even if the US never uses their military against us, there’s a very real chance they withhold parts for military equipment as leverage in a negotiation. They are already withholding military aid from Ukraine as leverage after all. That alone makes it imperative we end Canada’s dependency on the US defense industry.

This looks like a good idea. We do have people in Lunenberg, NS that have experience with working with stealth materials which could be a significant contribution to that project.

Could we call it the Arrow? Though I’d also be cool with it being called Spitfire.

But does the Eurofighter come in a flat pack with an allen key and a booklet that vaguely indicates how to assemble it?

That feels like an internet rumour. How would that even work? Like if someone took out LM’s servers all F-35s in the world would no longer function? If an enemy jammed the signal they wouldn’t work?

There’s no need to invent problems anyway. The US could potentially cut off Canada from parts needed to maintain the planes and that’s reason enough to cancel it.

The problems with mass shootings are stem from psychological problems. These problem stem from a culture that normalized posting photos on facebook posing with firearms. The point of these posts is to appear intimidating which associates firearms with power over others. This puts people that engage in this behavior one bad day from going on a killing spree.

So firearms need to be regulated similarly to tobacco. We don’t want tacticool firearms for people to pose with on facebook, which starts them down a dark path. Ideally firearms should be lame looking, and not have the capability of killing large numbers of people. Many weapons aren’t suitable for hunting, but pose a significant danger if used for killing sprees have been banned.

We aren’t Americans and we consider the rights of everyone, not just the rights of people that want to have guns to intimidate others on facebook, which is a sign of psychological problem, and have had demonstrated horrible results.

And yeah, guns get across the border. This is also illegal, so not sure why you’re trying to make a point about it being somehow hypocritical to have both owning weapons suited for mass killings be illegal while smuggling guns is also illegal.

If you don’t like it, go move to the US and have your kids go to schools where they need to do mass shooting drills. I don’t want to live that way in Canada for the sake of your hobbies.

Yeah so much of American culture is influenced by their terrible healthcare. Feelgood stories about people pooling together their money to help someone with their medical bills. It making sense to sue a family member for being injured in their house because it’ll mean their insurance will cover the medical bills.

It’s really insane.

The fact that our leadership created the conditions for or allowed to worsen our over-reliance on a single trading partner doesn’t speak much to the levels of competence we should expect out of Ottawa.

The opposite, really. Countries that trade with each other tend not to go to war with each other. Strong trade relations make wars very expensive. Before invading Canada the US will need to reduce it’s trade with us, or a war could result in an economic collapse of the US. Trump is right now finding out how expensive it is to the US to even do tariffs. A war would be a whole other level of expensive for the US.

That being said, the US has extremely unstable leadership right now. A war would be stupid, but then so are tariffs, so we can’t predict the depths of stupidity the US will sink to. But any country in the world could fall to fascism, so what can we do? I guess never trade with anyone? Become more likely to be attacked by rational actors because of fear of irrational actors?

Yeah it’s like 10%

The CBC interviewed one of these people and that guy was basically only cared about money and though paying lower taxes would be better. Probably didn’t factor in paying more money for health insurance.

But there was a guy nearby out walking his dog. When told what the interview was about he said “Is that what that rock over there is for? So we can throw it at him?”

I think it’s just terminally online people that are greedy as fuck. But there isn’t much risk of that 10% taking us over. If anything, they’re the ones taking a risk if they express their collaborator bullshit publicly. 10% with soft support vs. 90% that are absolutely against everything they’re about.

Are you suggesting that CAF fighting against US air power with our own air power has a chance of success?

The only interest the Trump regime has is monetary. Drones and missiles would inflict damage to the US, and if we keep their locations secret we’d have second strike capability. To achieve deterrence we’d only need to have the capability of inflicting enough damage to the US economy to cost the ruling oligarchy enough money to not be worthwhile to them.

The only immediate threat to Canada is the US right now. Europe won’t have a fifth gen fighter for quite some time, we’d obviously get cut off from parts for F-35s if there were a conflict with the US. We’ll need time recruit more people into the military to operate any plane and time to train them. We can start buying and producing drones in a much shorter time frame, which is critical given the pace Trump is betraying US allies.

Last time I was in the US I was in Hawaii in January 2009. Obama was being inaugurated and because of time zones I had to get up early to watch it. Figured it was worth getting up for because it was kinda historical. So I was in the common area of the hostel where the TV was and there were four other people in the room, two women sitting up front, close to the TV, excited about the Obama being inaugurated. And there was a dude at the back of the room cursing and swearing because the stock market was dropping.

When the speech was done, we got to talking. The two women excited about the inauguration were Canadian. The guy at the back of the room angry at Obama because of the stock market (he’s literally being inaugurated, he hadn’t done anything yet) was American.

Just felt like there was something wrong with that country then and just didn’t feel like going back there again. Then Trump came along and he did nothing but reinforce that feeling. Had some small hope they might be able to get past their greed, ignorance, and racism when Biden got in, but that just didn’t happen.

Haven’t gone there in 16 years, and sure as hell not going there now.

Yeah kinda. I don’t think it’s required to have bilingual labeling in all provinces in Canada but Doritos are “Zesty Mordant” across the country because it’s too much of a pain in the ass to have different labeling in different provinces.

But there are many things that are traditionally produced and used locally where that’s not the case. Every province has different building codes and building materials made in one province may not be up to code in another province.

Agriculture has similar issues.

A lot of it is just it doesn’t have the required label from a particular provincial official that prevents something from being sold in a province it wasn’t made it. Just stupid red tape stuff.

Get drones and missiles instead. Stockpile them in locations kept secret from the US. Refit our submarines so they’re capable of launching missiles again. Keep a few subs in the Caribbean at all times so they can hit their King’s winter palace in Florida.

That would be the best deterrent, other than nukes of course… which we’d need missiles for anyway.