As a Canadian, I find this unbelievably good news. Canada, the EU, and other middle powers need to unite. Stronger together, while preserving what makes each country unique.
As a non-Canadian, I find this a very good news also. You said it well. What I didn't expect was that things could move at this lightning pace. Well done, EU & Canada!
It's a bit funny saying all the naysaying comments, "this is just a name", "you have an ocean between each other", ...
Yeah, it's only a name, that name represent a reciprocal want to work closer together and do something. What, how, we will figure it out, the fact that people on both side of the exchange are all for it says so.
We're not idiots we know there will be hurdle, on one side you have the federal country that managed to convince the french Quebec to stay and on the other you have 27 countries who managed to convince each other to work together, we will figure it out.
I have a feeling that this "made up name/category" will be a pretext for fast-tracking whatever they want to do with Canada-EU relations without the other members voting on it since the last one they tried to do is 10 years on and still pending.
As someone who is very much in favor of this, let's remember that for now we're only at the announcements level. Any binding changes in the EU require a long process - if anything else, because there are 27 member states, each of which have veto power. But I'm hopeful that facts will follow these announcements.
That's true, however, under all the recent pressures, everything is much more fluid. Especially because 'associate member' does not exist yet as a status, I think they could do things much more incrementally compared to full memberships.
Trump is playing 5D chess! The Iran war, the feuds, all of it... He wanted the world to unite like this, and for green energy to displace fossil fuels quicker! One day he, not AOC or Bernie, will go down in history as the President who did more for green energy than any other.
Europe and Canada are going through a very significant "buy local" phase. If Canadian goods are considered local from the European perspective, that opens up a lot of opportunities.
Maybe it's something like "make purchasing decisions that maximally bolster your local economy, in aggregate, in the long term, where you deem it suitable for your needs"? Doesn't roll off the tongue though. Buy local.
The same thing, "buy American" means to an American. I.E. A New Yorker might prefer timber from across the continent in California even though Canada is right there.
Considering most liberals still are doing this "We considered an EV but a gas car was still is cheaper" song and dance, I would bet all my money that people just stick to whatever is cheapest, as they always do.
It's called the "Buy European" movement in Europe and the "Buy Canadian" movement in Canada (aka Elbows Up). Walk into a store and there are little maple leafs on the price tag of every Canadian product.
I apologize for confusing by trying to simplify with the buy local tag, which is different.
The wording is such that it sounds like he is pushing a very ambitious portfolio. It appears that the idea is to make this a model for a new alliance that will include other countries over time.
The other deals Canada has made with the EU have been very substantive. CETA was the first major trade deal that the EU passed.
> build more secure broadband connections between Europe and Asia via our common geography.
That made me do a double take and then rewind (I watched the full speech in the background), that's a fairly seismic shift if followed through and will reshape the internet over the next few decades (go look at a current fibre map for global internet links, they pretty much all route through the US and land in the UK), having an alternative path through Canada into the UK/Europe is a big change.
I do wonder how much of that still applies anyway, the extremely cosy/informal relationship between the five members can't really work in a world where one member is threatening to annexe the territory of one and support the annexation of another.
Trump wading into the Falklands debate was catastrophically stupid (not that I would expect otherwise) and chopped the legs out from the people who'd support him/their style of politics here.
So was threatening Canada, that's how he ended up dealing with Carney which from his PoV was the much worse outcome.
That’s for full EU members part of the economic union. There is a whole process for that which takes a few years. Britain had a good deal which they threw away (use their own currency but they’re a part of the broader economic union).
There’s already visa free travel from Canada to the EU and trade deals in progress. It’s unclear what specific benefits the associate member deal provides.
> In his address, Carney said Canada and Europe could strengthen their "strategic autonomy" through "deep co-operation in the full range of strategic capabilities, including critical minerals".
> He said Canada could supply liquefied natural gas and hydrogen to support European energy security, while benefiting from Europe's expertise in clean-energy technologies.
> He also proposed pooling technological resources and deepening "people to people ties", including allowing young people to "work, study and live where they want on either side of the Atlantic" through Canada joining the EU's Erasmus+ programme.
Apparently EU and Canada did well with the branding as this is entirely new concept that no one knows what it means but gives you warm and fuzzy feelings inside, isn't it?
Anyway, I would love it if Canada joins the free movement zone and Schengen eventually however despite not knowing what is this "associate member" thing is sounds like a stretch. Imagine though, how cool would be to travel to between America and Europe without your passport, like a domestic flight.
I'm really not fan of the trend to devide this rock in space into zones where you need a reason and permission based on that reason to travel. Can't be happier that there's a progress towards making the world a friendlier place.
Well the process has to start somewhere right? In politics (as in real life) words matter and what is being said today in these statements are the general outlines of how this relationship is going to move forward.
Yeah, I don’t understand why people have a problem with this. I think it should basically always be true between peer nations that there is free movement and trade.
There are a lot of jingoists around who want to use that character trait to amass power/wealth, or to find an excuse for things in their life they don't like. Sometimes, their grievances might even be legitimate.
Sort of a "meta" question about these announcements.
I assume they already talk about them privately beforehand. Carney first made a speech seeking some kind of enhanced status within the EU. Then von der Leyen said basically "Yeah we'd love that". Now Carney says "Great, let's do it."
It would be embarrassing if Carney's first speech had instead been met with silence.
So how many steps ahead do they choreograph these announcements? Did Carney show a draft of his speech today to people in the EU last week? "This is where I'd like us to be at next week. What do you guys think?"
Anyone who's worked in international diplomacy or UN-type institutions that would know this? I'm just interested in the mechanics of such an announcement.
Immigrants in Canada have a higher labor force participation rate than Canadian born citizens do.
When the wave of Syrians arrived a few years ago, most quickly got jobs. Many of them started working for businesses started by the Lebanese diaspora from the 80's.
Congratulations, tell that to the Germans, maybe they can send all the Afghans and Syrians living in there over to Canada since you're so keen to have them
Canadians aren’t going to vote for the reduced wages and worse conditions which several million EU workers will come with. This whole rhetoric is treating Canadians as if they’re metropolitan and worldly when for the most part a good 50% of them are like Americans but even more protectionist and insular, IMO.
My understanding is that an EU member state has to physically be in Europe unless they are an “extension” of a state already in the EU. I get that it’s supposed to be an “associate” state but I’m fascinated by what kind of legal hoops they’re going to jump through to make this happen.
They did make an exception for Cypress, so I suppose there’s some kind of precedent.
All of the things like free trade and free movement could presumably be negotiated separately, they’re just creating an omnibus deal and slapping a fancy label on it.
Its funny to read all the comments and finding both sides arguing that either is this is terrible thing or the best thing since slice bread and that basically no one has any ideas of what this new "associate membership" would entail.
I think you'll find most Albertans would welcome international trade diversity, and if anything is theatre, it's the referendum. "Secessionists" are a significant minority, and even most of those don't actually want to secede, they just don't like the national government. "Send a message to Ottawa" is the motto.
I mean, they are getting everything the want with the Fed gov building pipelines and other infra to aid them. The east/west from years back was the company didn't want to budge on the route through Quebec and decided to walk, Keystone was the US cancelling. Trudeau got the pipeline to the west coast done and it's doing a million barrels a day almost now. Plus others to east and Churchill look like they are in the works. Only so many welders
Carney has a majority in Parliament, he can do this pretty much unilaterally if he wants. And a straw poll at the after-beer from band last night had everybody enthusiastic about the prospect.
As for the secession referendum, it's currently polling at 20-30% and it's not a real referendum, its a referendum to hold a referendum.
Quebec is also about to have a provincial election where separatism, and everyone's relationship to it, is the main argument.
Many people on both sides of the Atlantic wrongly think Quebec is more compatible with Europe than the rest of Canada because they speak French, but almost the exact things Quebec separatists care most about are the things the EU wouldn't let them control.
> should the Government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada?
So it's a referendum on whether or not to start the process towards possibly, maybe, holding a referendum in the future.
Since the days of USENET there's always been a significant cluster of that kind of views in the tech sphere. Tech does not magically make people more liberal, it's just that going to university sometimes does.
> Tech communities like this skew more libertarian
Indeed, this is historically a forum with lots of "temporarily embarrassed billionaires".
My observation is the opposite of the GP - that labor identity and consciousness (not "liberalism") is rising here, pushed in no small part by the transformation in labor value that LLMs have caused.
The real political theatre is coming from Alberta. Secession can't be achieved unilaterally under Canadian constitutional law. A clear majority on a clear referendum question would create an obligation to negotiate.
More critically, the Numbered Treaties (6, 7, and 8, and to a lesser extent 4 and 10) make the entire idea, for all practical purposes, a legal dead end. These are nation-to-nation covenants with the Crown and not with the province.
To leave with its borders intact, Alberta would have to negotiate constitutional amendments with Ottawa and the other provinces, while securing affected First Nations’ consent to any transfer or replacement of their treaty relationships with Canada in a situation where Alberta has almost no leverage.
Alberta's existence as a province was predicated upon those Treaties existing in the first place. It and Saskatchewan were part of the NW Territories until like 1905.
Giving Alberta a market where they can sell LNG might get them on board, but this would also require a bunch of new infrastructure (pipelines? ports?) that I suspect the Canadian government will not want built.
It would be lovely to get Europe off of Russian energy imports.
One of the major problems of Canada is it's essentially a line of provinces east-west. It means you cannot simply route around a province with unreasonable demands, everyone must be placated, and the resource region of Alberta is seriously landlocked.
This has bred an economy of rent seekers and real estate at the expense of almost everything else. There are reasons that the best and brightest of Canada enthusiastically leave en masse to the place that Canadians claim to detest most of all, which leads to a sort of self loathing complex with the ones that stay; they are utterly mystified by the idea that anyone with any skills/talent whatsoever would want to move to Canada, it's truly mind boggling. (This is why I prefer Quebec - it's got enough people in it that really like Quebec a lot).
> you cannot simply route around a province with unreasonable demands, everyone must be placated, and the resource region of Alberta is seriously landlocked.
Retconned horseshit that emanates from idiot chambers.
The US is a big country next door, and historically the two economies and trade have been very tightly integrated. So Alberta hooks into the US pipeline system, as cooperative players in a continental energy system, and so does Ontario. There was never a critical reason to make significant East/West pipelines, in the same way that the US has loads of LNG export terminals (they were actually converted import terminals), and being connected to their LNG system meant it made little sense to spend billions of new terminals.
Not to mention some geographic issues. Running a pipeline through the Canadian shield is not a trivial matter. Possible, but it's much easier though the flyover US states.
And most hilarious of all about this, the reviled national energy program (NEP) -- you know, the one that 0% of Albertans understand but they're sure it was to screw them -- was the federal government proposing a national pipeline system. Alberta had a massive tantrum about it. Instead Alberta was constrained to selling oil at a massive discount to the US for decades.
>There are reasons that the best and brightest of Canada enthusiastically leave en masse to the place that Canadians claim to detest most of all
ROFL. Good god. The fact that you're in Quebec, and you celebrate Quebec (by far the most dysfunctional part of the country, largely a welfare state propped up by the rest of Canada, primarily Ontario), has to be the most hilarious part of this comical fan-fiction nonsense.
Now you seem to have a hilarious take on Canada, but in the real world the "West" anointed the US as the centre of power (the largest population base, unharmed by two world wars in a row). This means that people from everywhere generally centralized there, for media, for technology, and so on. Thanks to the current idiocracy and the accelerating decline of that country, the whole thing has reversed.
> largely a welfare state propped up by the rest of Canada, primarily Ontario
Aside from the wrongness of the rest of your comment, you're hilariously out of date here. Ontario has become the defining political and economic disaster area in Canada.
> Aside from the wrongness of the rest of your comment
I see you've, uh, comprehensively detailed what was wrong.
Nothing in my comment was wrong.
> Ontario has become the defining political and economic disaster area in Canada
ROFL. Christ.
Ontario's "economic disaster" contributes 2x the amount to federal coffers than Quebec does, despite only being 60% larger in population. It contributes almost 3x more than Alberta, which about tracks with the population difference. In every economic metric, Ontario obliterates Quebec.
Seeing Maple MAGA nonsense from someone living in Quebec is hilarious stuff. Quebec has always been our special little welfare state, that has a government massively funded out of proportion, largely on the backs of Ontario and BC. Having you slinging stones and talking about the greatness of Quebec is...well, it's amazing stuff.
I mean...mention it? What? What a hilarious comment, that clearly derives from whatever right wing echo chamber idiot chamber you emerged from.
Aside from the fact that it's...fine... (protip - the automakers have largely ignored Trump and know he's going to die in a pile of his own feces and they'll move on). A gigantic new multi-billion dollar battery plant (still going ahead...hey, did multiple in Quebec get abandoned?). A new armoured vehicle plant. Two new heavy duty truck plants.
I mean, Chrysler is collapsing, but eh. They're collapsing everywhere. BYD will likely buy one of their plants.
And it's hilarious when Maple MAGA mouth-breathers always bring up the auto industry. It could disappear and we'd move on. This delusion that we're all auto workers here is comedy. I don't know a single person even peripherally related to that industry.
> or the state of your public finances.
Which makes it extra funny that Ontario bankrolls Quebec largess. I agree that should be stopped. Quebec needs to stop being the welfare project dragging the country down, which is something that would make Alberta happy as well.
You are utterly clueless. Again, Ontario contributes 3x more to federal coffers than Alberta. Now extremely simple sorts look at "equalization payments" (you know, the welfare program for Quebec), and think it's somehow paid for by the "haves", but that isn't remotely how it works. Ontario and BC contribute almost all of the money that is then handed out to welfare provinces like Quebec.
> We all suffer the weakened CAD simply to secure votes in Ontario.
LOL, wtf. You really need to disengage from whatever bullshit chamber you clearly get your "knowledge" from, because this is just embarrassing nonsense.
Sort of. The referendum is unpopular and is non-binding, actually a question about whether to have a referendum. Its widely seen as a political maneuver by AB to extract pipeline concessions.
Trips to Canada have always left a bad taste in my mouth, but they've always been to Ontario, Quebec. I've been wondering if I'd like the people in Alberta better.
It's something many Canadians don't want to accept, but too much of their tourist facing industry is setup to exploit and frankly con Americans.
I recall on my first trip here ending up in hospital, being mistaken for an American and shown one price list, only for my insurance company to get on the phone and promptly a new price list appeared and a lot of "We're sorry we thought you were American" from the staff.
And prior to the mobile web dealing with Ontario hotels was like haggling in a Turkish bazaar with an obnoxious layer of passive aggression on top.
Months ago. I live in Quebec (which is where the hospital incident occurred).
Now thanks to the Internet it's way harder for hotel clerks to claim prices are different, which used to be exactly what they'd do, consequently it's improved dramatically on that front. I still remember the face of an Ottawa guy decades ago confronted with a european smartphone shoved in his face to show he was lying through his teeth. He clearly wasn't ready for the whole concept.
The hospital thing is standard practice in the US. The Canadian hospitals likely have to lie to get reasonable payouts from US insurance companies.
For instance, I once needed $600 of tests at the ER. The hospital billed $80K. The insurance company paid $7K. I paid $100.
Sure, the $600 does not include the ER overhead, but the $7K was still insanely inflated. The important thing is that the money ultimately came from insurance premiums, so every middleman was able to reliably extort all patients.
> For instance, I once needed $600 of tests at the ER. The hospital billed $80K. The insurance company paid $7K. I paid $100.
The other bit of the story was "we realised you might not be American from your face when we showed you the price list". I'm guessing you are American?
You need to understand how utterly insane this sounds if you are used to European systems.
And don't get me started on the fact Canadian healthcare doesn't actually transfer between provinces.
Just getting in I faced extremely rude border agents, which was just confusing. If it hadn't been for work I would have just gone home. There were some nice people, but I felt a general unfriendliness most places I went. Maybe it was just my experience.
It certainly hasn't been my experience visiting Ontario and Quebec. I've had nothing but good experiences. The Quebecois, especially in rural areas, are quite direct and I could maybe see that coming across as rude, but I've never felt unwelcome or a lack of friendliness there.
I've had rude border agents in many countries I've visited, and I've watched CBP officers being incredibly obnoxious to visitors entering the US. I don't think that's a Canada thing.
As a Canadian I've had pretty shit experiences with the land crossings coming back to Canada from the US. They seem to be total grumpy shitheads all around.
But at the same time I've had the absolute worst experiences crossing borders from Canada to US too. Seems like agents at the land crossings both ways just hate life or something.
And lastly, as a Prairie resident, I've felt that general unease in Ontario/Quebec as well. I think people there are just generally more bitter.
So I'd say don't take it personally, but that's only worth what you make of it I suppose.
> "work, study and live where they want on either side of the Atlantic"
Will the Canadian job market improve or suffer here? Does anyone know of any research that will determine if this would be beneficial for Canadians? Naively, I think it'll be harder to compete with Europeans for jobs.
Canada has needed more workers but is suffering from a lack of affordable($675000 average when the average family makes <$110000) housing like many places with other costs rising too. The number of housing starts has never recovered from the huge downturn around 2010.
EU is notoriously fractured and divided in the best of times, especially around membership. Importantly, many EU countries have not ratified CETA, and that was put in place in 2017.
FT is a pro transatlanticism but has a somewhat negative take on all of this
> EU is notoriously fractured and divided in the best of times, especially around membership.
Eh, we're less divided than people who think so realize, we're more divided than people who think we're united realize. Not really an issue on that particular case.
> Importantly, many EU countries have not ratified CETA
Like a lot of deals, including a big part of dicussion in the Canada/US talk, CETA's issues are about food.
But the thing is, unlike a lot of deal like Mercosur, CA/EU is very vast even excluding food, for BOTH sides of the talk. So I'm pretty sure we can figure things out.
The irony in this was that Canada, led by Alberta, was leaning towards a break up that would have likely led to slowly merging with the US, until someone really smart, a very bright individual, threatened them militarily.
I think it is support for the actual thing. Functional economies benefit startups, even if the startup is in the US and the functional parts of the market are overseas.
Or more specifically, for those paying attention many of us have to come around to the belief that it doesn't really matter who comes after Trump, We need to not be as dependent on the Americans because we can simply no longer trust them not to do it again since they already did it twice.
The issue is simply more pressing for the Canadians because they share a land border, 70% of their trade is with the US and they have threatened annexation.
It's not less pressing really for us Europeans either, a lot of people/politicians have had to ask some awkward questions like "Just how exposed are we to the Americans if they continue on this path" and the answer is one they really don't like.
The world order as it was benefited the Americans and us in myriad ways but they seem to have decided they no long want things that way so it entirely comes down to what we do in response to that.
In some ways an unreliable ally is worse than an enemy because you can generally predict what your enemies intentions will be.
It seems like a lot of Americans get discomfited when you point this out even the ones who don't support Trump/the current US Gov but it's not personal, on the scale of countries it can't really be personal.
We simply can't trust them as a country or as a government as much as we previously could and I don't see that changing for the better in at least a generation if they even want it to.
Hey, so what do y'all think it felt like back in the 30s to watch the world split between a handful of really aggressive countries and everyone else? Specifically, what do y'all think it felt like to be a non-aggressive person living in one of the handful of really aggressive countries?
The news cycle was a lot slower, and there’s a chance you wouldn’t be literate enough to read newspapers. I suspect you’d probably just carry on per usual.
Carney has extremely strong support amongst the general public in Canada which hasn't been the case for the Canadian PM over the past 20+ years.
158 Canadian soldiers died defending the United States at the US's request after 9/11. Canadian fighter jets helped to patrol the skies in the US at the US's request after 9/11.
The insults coming from the US Secretary of Defence and President are not unnoticed. They are logged and remembered.
Canada and America have enjoyed the best neighbors relationship in history, but one neighbor has been playing for the neighborhood security for decades while the other stagnates.
America is at a crossroads, our debt has become a national security issue, globalism failed to make China and Russia strong democratic institutions, climate change will happen (the trump administration is preparing for it more seriously than any other) and Europe has failed to flourish enough to stand on its own two defensive feet.
As awful as trump is, we can no longer be the worlds backstop. You may have flown some planes on 9/11 but we’ve been paying to tab for 50 years. And we can’t anymore.
This is mostly a point condensed from the book “Tropic of chaos” which everyone should read.
The focus towards the north (Greenland/Canada) is one potential successful post-climate-change strategy.
Control over the opened trade routes and natural resources as the northern oceans thaw will be a highly contested global issue, the type of issue that can lead to war.
Of course, this is a more charitable interpretation of long term plans than might be warranted.
You have no idea what you are talking about. Armed lifeboat is a serious climate change strategy. You and I might not like it. But we are heading down the path very seriously.
> 1) we are past the point of no return in climate change
Hmm...I wonder who did that?
Is paying taxpayer money to shut down already approved windfarms a good way to prepare for climate change? A few extra years to prepare that "armed lifeboat" are completely unnecessary?
I mean in a way it's true. MAGA is a death cult and they want to hasten the apocalypse, which is why MAGA is such good bed fellows with US big tech as they too also want to hasten the apocalypse.
These people fervently believe that they will prosper once the earth is destroyed, so please trust that they will do everything in their lives to make it so.
If that is so onerous, multiple EU countries should get nuclear missiles and make an EU NATO. But you don't want that. You want the dollar propped up irrationally by your military promises and you want NATO and non-NATO proxies against Russia ans China.
The promises incidentally fail yet again in Iran, where the Saudis already make other treaties with Turkey and Pakistan.
> 158 Canadian soldiers died defending the United States at the US's request after 9/11. Canadian fighter jets helped to patrol the skies in the US at the US's request after 9/11.
Bad idea. Canada (as well as all other nations) should let the US fight and lose its wars by itself.
Agreed, and the possibility of visa free travel to the EU, plus the removal of live/work barriers is appealing. The USA really comes off as the spurned ex that calls you drunk in the middle of the night.
Research the "Monroe doctrine"... by which I mean, don't just look up a one paragraph summary, spend a bit of time with it. A few pages of text at least. Ideally in a modern formulation you should encounter the term "World Island" without having directly searched for it and how the modern iteration of the Monroe doctrine is a reaction to that in a way that the original didn't have to contend with.
I'm not doing advocacy here, I'm giving pointers on how to come to a deeper understanding of what is going on.
It is also important to understand that the EU is directly attacking this doctrine with this proposal. You are free to agree with the EU. Again, I'm just giving something to guide people to a deeper understanding of what is going on beyond the surface level playground politics of it all. There's more going on than that.
(Personally I would say I "disagree" with the Monroe doctrine but the sort of national/international structure I would actually want is not even remotely on the table, so... my opinion is thereby of even less import than a random other opinion drawn from "the masses" for choosing "E, none of the above" when that was not given as an option in the first place.)
You elided if you want to understand what is going on more deeply, which is a rather important part.
I say that precisely because I know that in reality most people aren't that interested. Which feel like I'm insulting people or something, but it's just the reality, we don't all have time to dig into absolutely everything all the time, and if you're not interested that's fine. But if you are, this is the best pathway to understanding this at a deeper level than the playground level.
TLDR; The dollar is the global currency of record, the US became the richest country in the world, and Stalin didn't get Europe and Japan. The massive export market and global security was the payoff.
The trade deficit and debt is in USD it's a line in the ledger that is somewhat fine and sustainable as long as the world stays on the USD as the currency of record. Countries for now are happy to keep storing their reserves in US bonds - Canada holds 600-700 billion in US debt. Japan over a trillion.
This is a direct stab at the US imperialist faction — not MAGA, who want the US to break up with the EU.
I genuinely don’t understand this move through the lens of realpolitik: they’re mad at Trump, so they’re going to offend CFR et al who are aligned on Fortress America and neo-empire by threatening to take a critical vassal for the EU?
Okay — but you just turned being mad at MAGA into the MIC deep state viewing you as an enemy and therefore further military alliance with any EU member unviable. All because the EU couldn’t stomach four years of crass taunts from a TV conman.
USA has always been very aggressive about territory and hostile to Europe in the Americas. The Canada vs UK vs EU relationship seems more interesting to me.
A whole lot of Trump's psychology has always been "it's your fault I hurt you" for the longest time — it's a very clear undercurrent in how he treated his first wife.
As I said it in another post, what does Trump expect? His negotiations are all stick and no carrot.
Canada is bound to look for new trade opportunities in the face of that.
You make a deal with Trump, it's always worse than what you had previously.
Then, no mater what you do, he breaks the deal 3 months later with some kind of implied military threat if you complain.
All the comparisons with personal relationships here are silly. This isn't a marital split. This someone who thinks they're the only customer saying they don't want to buy something and the vendor saying fair enough, I'll sell it to someone else.
> So if Canada tries to make friends with anyone other than the US, it's a hostile act?
I don't think anyone really says it's an hostile act but both countries, Canada and the US will have to decide what it means for their ongoing relationship.
Canada is free to get closer to Europe and the US is free to be displeased about it.
Maybe it works out well for Canada or maybe it doesn't.
> Makes it all the more obvious that USA is Canada's abusive partner
Why anthropomorphize geopolitics?
This is just just a big fish throwing its weight around like all big fishes do. Russia does it with its neighbors, China does it as well and India and Europe are not shy about it either.
It's just the name of the game and its been happening since the dawn of time.
Some states use force, others bribe or cajole but in the end they all try to influence their neighbors in a way that suits their interests especially if these neighbors are smaller in terms of population/economy/military etc...
The fact that so many people are shocked by such news these days is because everyone drank the cool aid of the End of History and forgot that spheres of influence still exists and that the rule of law was nothing more than gentleman's agreement that could be thrown out of the window at a moment's notice without second thoughts.
> I don't think anyone really says it's an hostile act
Trump does. His inner circle does. His supporters do.
> Canada and the US will have to decide what it means for their ongoing relationship.
Sounds like an abusive husband's version of "think of what this will do to the children."
> Why anthropomorphize geopolitics?
Because some people need to have complex issues explained to them in ways that are simple to understand. Particularly when it comes to issues involving Trump politics, the people who desperately need to understand these issues are those who also seem to need the issues explained to them like they are a fourth-grader.
Fortunately the US already fails in its first special military operation in Iran, so it cannot launch a second one in Canada to protect the English speaking population in Canada.
This comment[0] on HN from a while back marks the parallels between the two situations very clearly.
It's very frustrating talking about this subject with Americans online[1]. In general they seem to have blinders on regarding the magnitude of the consequences of their democratic choice in leadership.
I get a sense that a feeling of learned helplessness has beset the American people and that they're not able to imagine a world of agency and action against authoritarianism.
I don't know what can shake them out of their torpor, but I do know that the longer they take to wake up the higher the price of action will be.
> It's very frustrating talking about this subject with Americans online[1]. In general they seem to have blinders on regarding the magnitude of the consequences of their democratic choice in leadership.
If polls are to be believed, the majority of Americans do not, in fact, fit that description.
Trump has already been threatening Canada and EU at various times already. Why should they assume a) this will be any different b) he'll stop if they do what he wants?
That doesn't really matter. What matters is that he commands the most powerful (probably?) offensive force on the planet and has already shown that he is more than willing to use it to achieve his nonsense objectives.
Personally, I take everything he says and does seriously. I advise non-citizens visiting to turn their social media to private and bring a burner phone to immigration checkpoints. For citizens, turning off your phone should be enough.
I think a lot of us outside the US will go further and simply never visit the US ever again. That certainly applies to me despite having spent quite a lot of time in the US and having ex-colleagues who I regard as friends there.
> His charistma is a large part of why he was elected.
He has the charisma of a mouldy grapefruit. It certainly wasn't his charisma.
He was elected because he was able to convince many, many people that there are simple solutions to complex problems and that he was the only person in the world "brave" enough to implement them.
Don’t forget granting partial control of that other strait to the Houthis a few days ago.
Closer to home: there have been a record number of firefighter fatalities this year. It is partially climate change, and partially redirecting national guard troops to harass folks in DC and pick up litter.
According to this morning’s news, he’s also micromanaging of firefighting efforts to make them less effective, more expensive, more dangerous, and to maximize future fire risk.
Basically he’s dictated head on attacks to fire fronts, and complete suppression. All experts and firefighters agree it is better to contain the borders of the fires instead, and only fight fires on the interior if it makes ecological sense or protects buildings, lives, etc. (After all, the burn on the interior is necessary for forest health, and also removes fuel.)
Then there’s the NASA thing, where he didn’t want to pay $10M for building maintenance, so instead put $10B of active missions at risk, and threw out > $100M of specialized equipment (or auctioned it off at tenths of pennies on the dollar; probably to US adversaries).
What's the best estimate for US to recover from non-stop levels of stupid?
It's at least a decade but now I'm starting to think two decades
And the problem is since people have short memories there's going to be a Trump 2.0 doing a full speedrun back to destroying democracy as hard and as fast as possible, fueled by Heritage Foudation
So we may be recovering every decade at this point
I mean Bush plowed the economy into the ground plus stop-loss endless war and yet here we are again
The US is always going to be a large powerful and influential country, Geography and natural resources and a high education base ensure that.
What it won't be is as influential as it was for a long time, if ever.
The damage isn't a "Next President" problem, it's already a generational problem.
The international rules/trade based order was predicated on both sides agreeing that those were the rules, when one side unilaterally decides to tear it up and then demand the same advantages they had before they tore it up, the other has to respond, it can't ignore it.
They chose to open Pandora's box on this one, the rest of us are just figuring out what that looks like going forwards.
I have a litmus test for democrats. If they pass, it could dig out in a decade or two. If not, it is probably game over:
Do you support pursuing criminal charges for current members of the executive branch and their counterparts in private industry? Do you support pursuing maximum sentences, including asset seizure and the death penalty? Do you support suspending or otherwise not honoring presidential pardons? Will you cooperate with ICCC warrants?
If you think my litmus test is too harsh, consider the fact that the Bush family made its fortune by illegally selling to the Nazis, was caught literally organizing a military coup in the US, and was instrumental in ripping out a perfectly good national passenger train network.
In response they got a slap on the wrist and used their illegal gains to control the white house. Twice.
> What's the best estimate for US to recover from non-stop levels of stupid?
I think it'll get much worse before we can even hope it gets a tiny bit better. Politics are fucked, education is fucked, petrol is fucked, the stock market is extra fucked, morales are fucked, etc.
So if you mean "when do we start winning like in the 80s", it's probably never, too many things are breaking down or on the verge of breaking down, things with way too much momentum to fix by simply getting the other side of the political spectrum in control for 4 years. Not even talking about China planning for the next 100 years when Trump can't even determine if he'll shit his pants in the next 15 minutes
It’s a win-win scenario for wealthy people. Poor people always get screwed in any kind of free trade deal, since prices of goods always rise to the highest possible point in the entire free trade zone.
That is just not true. FTAs lower trade barriers on imported goods, leading to consumer welfare gains from increase in product variety, better quality products and lower prices for existing products.
Can the blue states of USA become associate members too? He has declared that the blue states are the "enemy from within" and may launch the military against us soon.
Unfortunately, the Constitution (Article 1 Section 10) forbids states from entering into alliances and treaties with other countries, or with one another, without the explicit permission of Congress.
Law also prevents US military from being deployed against citizens, that isn't stopping Trump. In fact, Trump has asked for the constitution to be set aside, during his campaign.
The Posse Comitatus Act makes it a criminal statute that bars anyone from willfully using federal military forces — the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Space Force — "to execute the laws" unless expressly authorized by the Constitution or an act of Congress.
Would it be possible to offer anything more substantive? For example:
1) Why would none of the ~20-25 blue states want to join the EU? Why would it be preferable for the big ones to go it alone in an increasingly fractious world?
2) In what way does the EU not offer much? If this is the case, how did they end up with 28 members joining, another 5 or so waiting to do so, and only 1 ever leaving?
The point isn't about being pro/negative the EU, it's about providing something thoughtful, as opposed to just throwing out your opinions.
While I would welcome Canada as an associate EU member, one must be aware of the possibility that this is political theater in order to sell more Ukraine support to the Canadian public. Canada proposes to join EU funding for the Ukraine war, so both the EU and Canada follow literally Pete Hegseth's instructions from 2025 for burden sharing in NATO and finance the US proxy war:
I don’t think you understand that the EU and Canada both have deep vested interests in protecting Ukrainian sovereignty. Canada shares a large Arctic border with Russia, and is geopolitically motivated to prevent Russian expansionism. The EU is motivated to defend its eastern flank, and impose cost on a Russia that may just eye the Baltic states next.
The Prime Minister can’t seem to get his story straight about the “associate membership,” “unique alliance,” or whatever else he is negotiating with the EU.
Conservatives are clear: we support the decades-old free trade & NATO defence alliance with Europe.
But no EU taxes, no EU laws, and no EU open-border immigration policies should be imposed on Canadians.
Canada must be independent and sovereign. Period.
This is the same PP that grasped defeat in the face of victory, and is continually losing support, relegating himself to the same position of the Reform party that it was in the 90's. The same Polly that lost his riding last election, and had to have one handed to him on a silver spoon. I would take his opinion with a grain of salt.
It doesn't seem like anyone knows what it is yet since it's a new thing. But free movement of people for work is mentioned in almost every article about it.
It would need to be actually negotiated and stuff, but the opposition quote is just agreeing with all the public statements I have seen from the EU and Canadian leadership.
So, I guess the opposition supports associate membership in everything but name.
It doesn't matter what the truth of the matter is. What Dear Leader says is used as a scare tactic and marching orders for the underlings to believe and repeat. If you live/interact with conservative people long enough you see the pattern. There's absolute trust in what their leadership says, but skepticism for any criticism of those same talking points.
So all this tweet is doing is seeding doubt, and distrust among the electorate. It doesn't have to be true, but if the goal is to maintain control it looks like this. The Canadian Conservatives are still extremely pro-USA but have learned to keep their opinions close to the chest because they're currently politically unpoular.
Classic Conservative move of building a strawman and arguing against it. None of these deals would involve taxes, EU "laws" (whatever that means) or border agreements. He's using the boogeyman of "ew brown people" to scare his base.
Apparently, even Canadian conservatives are happy to grovel at the feet of the Burger Reich and their supreme leader.
> None of these deals would involve taxes, EU "laws" (whatever that means) or border agreements.
It's a bit rich to say this when nothing yet is known.
If Carney or the EU did not want the oppositions to start speculating regarding what it entails, maybe they should have talked about exactly what an associate membership means and what of sort of things could be expected from such a move.
Maybe they are wrong or maybe you are and maybe it will involve EU taxes and EU regulations or maybe since you are absolutely certain of what it entails you have some sort of insider information that nobody else has?
Until such a time as everyone knows and understand what a possible associate membership means for the EU and Canada, then nothing should be considered off the table and it is justified to ask questions and get some clarifications on all of this.
What, €500 for a return flight? That’s millions of people with no money and no job able to fly to Canada and look for one - putting your hands on €500 isn’t impossible for anyone. The flights are so cheap as to be almost irrelevant for anyone motivated to go there. Plus Canadian wages are much higher, including tips. Getting a hospitality job in Canada pays about €500 a week in untaxed tips if you’re working hard anywhere half-decent. Or at least canadian wages are currently much higher - low skilled labour migrating there from the EU will push wages down and down, same as it always does.
Hang on you're saying people granted legal permission to fly to a country, specifically to immigrate to that country, also have the money to fly there? Crazy coincidence, that.
Canada doesn't have "open borders" or "free mobility" with "east asia" in the way that people are boogeymanning.
The closest approximation is the united states under NAFTA.
There is lots of poverty in America, but the border doesn't appear to have an issue. I fail to see how this would be much different (except more difficult due to an ocean and better security/screening checks on airport arrivals).
He's not wrong. I have a suspicion this EU idea is a way to backdoor immigration increases - something the Trudeau government was very keen on but was scaled back by Carney. Largely because immigration has become a hot-button issue in Canada and was partly responsible for Polilievre's popularity last election. Joining a treaty where another governing body would set the criteria for immigration and Canada just has to accept it due to freedom of movement within the EU is one way to route around the whole thing politically and make it much harder to change in the future.
If this is the motivation, it's a grossly undemocratic move.
I don't get how folks who hyperventilate about Trump being a threat to democracy can look at stuff like this and cheer.
IMHO, it would be a win even if it allowed movement between Canada and the EU as freely as Canadians and Americans can currently move between Canada and the US. That would give Canadian snowbirds easier (longer) access to warm EU destinations, while those destinations would benefit from the additional revenue.
In winter even the warm bits of the EU aren't all that warm either, and no one complains about the cold like a (non B.C.) Canadian encountering European winter humid cold for the first time.
Europeans go to Thailand, even Latam etc. It's why so many were killed in the Indian Ocean tsunami.
They are currently targeting civilian populations there by weaponizing access to necessities. They have intentionally created multiple humanitarian crises, then rerouted food and energy imports through Florida companies for private benefit.
This is a long way of asking: Can the US west coast become an associate EU member too? Here in California, the Sierra Nevada and deserts of the southwest are already 99% of the wall we’d need to protect our border from maga zealots.
I'm sorry, but nothing is going to happen. Canada and the EU made up an imaginary category for good vibes and to market some likely very limited cooperation in arms development or maybe research programs. We already have CETA and I doubt any "associate membership" will be more consequential like that.
In two years this will have fizzled out like any other marketing blitzes by the EU (remember Gaia-X?). I say this as a disillusioned EU citizen. This institution doesn't have any ambition left.
According to the FT, Von der Leyen didn't really get the OK from member states before coming up with this. Let's see what happens in practice, the trade agreement from 2017 hasn't even been ratified yet.
Is this some kind of astroturf campaign? It's like the 4th time this topic sourcing a BBC article has appeared on the first page in about as many days and the comments on it are all the same drab, short and repetitive expressions of support. This really doesn't seem like the kind of material that normally interests HN users.
I'm not even in the US. I just think it's absurd that minor variations on this news keeps ranking so high and a lot of the comments are basically "Good", "Great", "I support this".
Shacked to a corpse! Europe where is your NVIDIA, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, OpenAI, SpaceX ... You have high power cost, high electric cost, high taxes; What fertile soil!
Without commenting on the EU, particularly, I would be concerned if I were a Canadian about Carney's commitment to globalism when the degenerate cases have become so common.
It's a weird two-front war where people tend to answer the social question and ignore the economic one, but the economic question has not done any favors to the EU or the US for that matter
Czechia electing Babis who invited nazis into coalition...
But I don't think you can just elect Hitler in every nation and then get them to cooperate. They will inevitably want more and when they do they become aggressive. At which point I guess people will reconsider.
Smells like a long-term attempt to break the EU from within TBH.
Your argument is that some vague hypothetical bad thing could happen to Canada if they diversified their trade partners, so they should just accept economic terrorism from DC and not attempt to support the parts of their economy that already rely on imports/exports?
You call it globalism, when it is in practice having good trade relations.
And the opposite case is also a quick way to degenerate cases: if Canada devalued cooperation, what is the argument for provinces to not do the same? And thus it would only fuel Quebec and Alberta separatism.
You already see it with Brexit which is clearly opening further "us-vs-them" outlooks in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
As a Canadian, I find this unbelievably good news. Canada, the EU, and other middle powers need to unite. Stronger together, while preserving what makes each country unique.
As a non-Canadian, I find this a very good news also. You said it well. What I didn't expect was that things could move at this lightning pace. Well done, EU & Canada!
It's a bit funny saying all the naysaying comments, "this is just a name", "you have an ocean between each other", ...
Yeah, it's only a name, that name represent a reciprocal want to work closer together and do something. What, how, we will figure it out, the fact that people on both side of the exchange are all for it says so.
We're not idiots we know there will be hurdle, on one side you have the federal country that managed to convince the french Quebec to stay and on the other you have 27 countries who managed to convince each other to work together, we will figure it out.
I have a feeling that this "made up name/category" will be a pretext for fast-tracking whatever they want to do with Canada-EU relations without the other members voting on it since the last one they tried to do is 10 years on and still pending.
As someone who is very much in favor of this, let's remember that for now we're only at the announcements level. Any binding changes in the EU require a long process - if anything else, because there are 27 member states, each of which have veto power. But I'm hopeful that facts will follow these announcements.
That's true, however, under all the recent pressures, everything is much more fluid. Especially because 'associate member' does not exist yet as a status, I think they could do things much more incrementally compared to full memberships.
Trump is playing 5D chess! The Iran war, the feuds, all of it... He wanted the world to unite like this, and for green energy to displace fossil fuels quicker! One day he, not AOC or Bernie, will go down in history as the President who did more for green energy than any other.
The orange path.
(given your nickname, this was your moment and you caught it)
Are there any tangible economic benefits here? Or is it just a label?
Europe and Canada are going through a very significant "buy local" phase. If Canadian goods are considered local from the European perspective, that opens up a lot of opportunities.
>Europe and Canada are going through a very significant "buy local" phase.
Not exactly. The sentiment I see is more like ‘buy anything but USA’.
What does buy local mean if goods shipped from the other side of the planet are considered local?
Maybe it's something like "make purchasing decisions that maximally bolster your local economy, in aggregate, in the long term, where you deem it suitable for your needs"? Doesn't roll off the tongue though. Buy local.
The same thing, "buy American" means to an American. I.E. A New Yorker might prefer timber from across the continent in California even though Canada is right there.
Considering most liberals still are doing this "We considered an EV but a gas car was still is cheaper" song and dance, I would bet all my money that people just stick to whatever is cheapest, as they always do.
I don't think the movement is "buy local" it's more "buy from people we trust".
Local as in the same economic area
It means neither will be buying american, which is "good" in that it helps cut ties with the US, which is what america seems to want.
Buying local is to cut transportation/pollution, not to buy from your friends...
Buying local in 2026 mostly means weaning oneself from Google/AWS/Meta/etc.
99% of people don't know what aws is... buying local is mostly for physical products, food, etc. I know we're on HN but come on lol
It's called the "Buy European" movement in Europe and the "Buy Canadian" movement in Canada (aka Elbows Up). Walk into a store and there are little maple leafs on the price tag of every Canadian product.
I apologize for confusing by trying to simplify with the buy local tag, which is different.
Aye, let's redefine what „local“ means and keep buying globally. Same BS as with mercosur and all other global trade deals.
Carney's speech is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7Y9eFJFZfo
The text of the speech is at https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/speeches/2026/09/17/prime-minis...
The wording is such that it sounds like he is pushing a very ambitious portfolio. It appears that the idea is to make this a model for a new alliance that will include other countries over time.
The other deals Canada has made with the EU have been very substantive. CETA was the first major trade deal that the EU passed.
> build more secure broadband connections between Europe and Asia via our common geography.
That made me do a double take and then rewind (I watched the full speech in the background), that's a fairly seismic shift if followed through and will reshape the internet over the next few decades (go look at a current fibre map for global internet links, they pretty much all route through the US and land in the UK), having an alternative path through Canada into the UK/Europe is a big change.
Interesting from a surveillance point of view. Are we going to end up with the Four Eyes?
I do wonder how much of that still applies anyway, the extremely cosy/informal relationship between the five members can't really work in a world where one member is threatening to annexe the territory of one and support the annexation of another.
Trump wading into the Falklands debate was catastrophically stupid (not that I would expect otherwise) and chopped the legs out from the people who'd support him/their style of politics here.
So was threatening Canada, that's how he ended up dealing with Carney which from his PoV was the much worse outcome.
Does low-tariff trade and easier freedom of movement offer benefits?
That’s for full EU members part of the economic union. There is a whole process for that which takes a few years. Britain had a good deal which they threw away (use their own currency but they’re a part of the broader economic union).
There’s already visa free travel from Canada to the EU and trade deals in progress. It’s unclear what specific benefits the associate member deal provides.
Tourist visa. But this may end up including student and/or work visas.
Did you not read the OP?
> In his address, Carney said Canada and Europe could strengthen their "strategic autonomy" through "deep co-operation in the full range of strategic capabilities, including critical minerals".
> He said Canada could supply liquefied natural gas and hydrogen to support European energy security, while benefiting from Europe's expertise in clean-energy technologies.
> He also proposed pooling technological resources and deepening "people to people ties", including allowing young people to "work, study and live where they want on either side of the Atlantic" through Canada joining the EU's Erasmus+ programme.
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Good. The EU is an economic and political union so facilitating trade and movement between political allies seems only natural.
Apparently EU and Canada did well with the branding as this is entirely new concept that no one knows what it means but gives you warm and fuzzy feelings inside, isn't it?
Anyway, I would love it if Canada joins the free movement zone and Schengen eventually however despite not knowing what is this "associate member" thing is sounds like a stretch. Imagine though, how cool would be to travel to between America and Europe without your passport, like a domestic flight.
I'm really not fan of the trend to devide this rock in space into zones where you need a reason and permission based on that reason to travel. Can't be happier that there's a progress towards making the world a friendlier place.
Well the process has to start somewhere right? In politics (as in real life) words matter and what is being said today in these statements are the general outlines of how this relationship is going to move forward.
Schengen looks like a stretch, considering the geographic situation, but free movement is achievable, if both want it.
Yeah, I don’t understand why people have a problem with this. I think it should basically always be true between peer nations that there is free movement and trade.
Having been through years of brexit crap, I can tell you that the answer is racism, and the weaponisation of outrage by the media
Japan, Australia, South Korea and few other democracies also should join-in for resilience against US and China
> Yeah, I don’t understand why people have a problem with this.
Some want to be ensured Canada's sovereignty isn't changed. As this as of right now is a news headline I get their point of view for now.
There are a lot of jingoists around who want to use that character trait to amass power/wealth, or to find an excuse for things in their life they don't like. Sometimes, their grievances might even be legitimate.
Sort of a "meta" question about these announcements.
I assume they already talk about them privately beforehand. Carney first made a speech seeking some kind of enhanced status within the EU. Then von der Leyen said basically "Yeah we'd love that". Now Carney says "Great, let's do it."
It would be embarrassing if Carney's first speech had instead been met with silence.
So how many steps ahead do they choreograph these announcements? Did Carney show a draft of his speech today to people in the EU last week? "This is where I'd like us to be at next week. What do you guys think?"
Anyone who's worked in international diplomacy or UN-type institutions that would know this? I'm just interested in the mechanics of such an announcement.
Man, I'd love if Canada became part of Schengen and had freedom of movement for workers as well.
Also EU can exposer some of their asylum seekers to Canada as well
Canadian here, we have plenty of room in this country.
Unlike the United States, we don't put immigrants in cages either. Instead we give them opportunities to work and contribute.
People are welcome to apply and come.
If only they worked and contributed, better ramp up your social benefits
Immigrants in Canada have a higher labor force participation rate than Canadian born citizens do.
When the wave of Syrians arrived a few years ago, most quickly got jobs. Many of them started working for businesses started by the Lebanese diaspora from the 80's.
Congratulations, tell that to the Germans, maybe they can send all the Afghans and Syrians living in there over to Canada since you're so keen to have them
Can you stop with the racist bs already? Thank you.
Did I hurt your fragile feelings by telling the truth? Grow up
Whether are in favour of or against taking in asylum seekers, sharing that burden/responsibiltiy between partners would definitely be what people want
I'd love if my EU passport allowed me work and living rights in Canada
Canadians aren’t going to vote for the reduced wages and worse conditions which several million EU workers will come with. This whole rhetoric is treating Canadians as if they’re metropolitan and worldly when for the most part a good 50% of them are like Americans but even more protectionist and insular, IMO.
That's what I meant with freedom of worker movement, not sure what's the correct term is.
Related: "EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member' (bbc.com)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49724141 863 comments
My understanding is that an EU member state has to physically be in Europe unless they are an “extension” of a state already in the EU. I get that it’s supposed to be an “associate” state but I’m fascinated by what kind of legal hoops they’re going to jump through to make this happen.
They did make an exception for Cypress, so I suppose there’s some kind of precedent.
Canada has a sea border with France.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Pierre_and_Miquelon
And a land border with Denmark.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Island
Also, I think the constraint to be in the EU is that it has to be "an European country". It's relatively vague.
Is it a land border? Because if they are separated by a stretch of sea, well, the same is true for Canada and mainland France.
By that logic the UK doesn't have any neighbors other than the Repulic of Ireland.
The UK has a land border with Spain in Gibraltar
Checkmate, I'll give you that one.
Someone else pointed out Canada also has a land border with Denmark: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49741686
What about Australia? New Zealand? Japan? Maybe Indonesia (I don't know maybe it has something on the Asian mainland).
All of the things like free trade and free movement could presumably be negotiated separately, they’re just creating an omnibus deal and slapping a fancy label on it.
Not really, as long as it’s majority white nation and shares European culture, they are fine with it
Its funny to read all the comments and finding both sides arguing that either is this is terrible thing or the best thing since slice bread and that basically no one has any ideas of what this new "associate membership" would entail.
That's unbelievable to be honest ! As european who live in Canada i have a weird feeling
Curious if you would like to share more.
Meanwhile, Alberta, where all of Canada's "energy security" is located, is holding a secession referendum on Oct 19.
The chances of Canada getting everyone to go along with this are close to zero. (As are the chances of Alberta actually seceding).
It's just political theater
I think you'll find most Albertans would welcome international trade diversity, and if anything is theatre, it's the referendum. "Secessionists" are a significant minority, and even most of those don't actually want to secede, they just don't like the national government. "Send a message to Ottawa" is the motto.
Like, more markets for O&G and maybe AG too.
I mean, they are getting everything the want with the Fed gov building pipelines and other infra to aid them. The east/west from years back was the company didn't want to budge on the route through Quebec and decided to walk, Keystone was the US cancelling. Trudeau got the pipeline to the west coast done and it's doing a million barrels a day almost now. Plus others to east and Churchill look like they are in the works. Only so many welders
Carney has a majority in Parliament, he can do this pretty much unilaterally if he wants. And a straw poll at the after-beer from band last night had everybody enthusiastic about the prospect.
As for the secession referendum, it's currently polling at 20-30% and it's not a real referendum, its a referendum to hold a referendum.
Quebec is also about to have a provincial election where separatism, and everyone's relationship to it, is the main argument.
Many people on both sides of the Atlantic wrongly think Quebec is more compatible with Europe than the rest of Canada because they speak French, but almost the exact things Quebec separatists care most about are the things the EU wouldn't let them control.
The actual referendum question will be
> should the Government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada?
So it's a referendum on whether or not to start the process towards possibly, maybe, holding a referendum in the future.
https://www.elections.ab.ca/elections/referendum/
Its interesting to see just how MAGA-ajacent the comments are on hacker news. You would think most people in tech were more liberal.
Since the days of USENET there's always been a significant cluster of that kind of views in the tech sphere. Tech does not magically make people more liberal, it's just that going to university sometimes does.
I think it's more interesting to see how many profiles pop out of the woodwork when certain political topics arise
Tech communities like this skew more libertarian I find, which tends to be anti everything that isn’t immediately self serving.
> Tech communities like this skew more libertarian
Indeed, this is historically a forum with lots of "temporarily embarrassed billionaires".
My observation is the opposite of the GP - that labor identity and consciousness (not "liberalism") is rising here, pushed in no small part by the transformation in labor value that LLMs have caused.
Obama -> Bernie -> Trump is real.
> The chances of Canada getting everyone to go along with this are close to zero.
They are a democracy, they don't have to get "everyone to go along with this" they just have to get the majority to go along with it.
The real political theatre is coming from Alberta. Secession can't be achieved unilaterally under Canadian constitutional law. A clear majority on a clear referendum question would create an obligation to negotiate.
More critically, the Numbered Treaties (6, 7, and 8, and to a lesser extent 4 and 10) make the entire idea, for all practical purposes, a legal dead end. These are nation-to-nation covenants with the Crown and not with the province.
To leave with its borders intact, Alberta would have to negotiate constitutional amendments with Ottawa and the other provinces, while securing affected First Nations’ consent to any transfer or replacement of their treaty relationships with Canada in a situation where Alberta has almost no leverage.
Good luck.
Alberta's existence as a province was predicated upon those Treaties existing in the first place. It and Saskatchewan were part of the NW Territories until like 1905.
Only sane response in this thread about this topic. Thank you.
Giving Alberta a market where they can sell LNG might get them on board, but this would also require a bunch of new infrastructure (pipelines? ports?) that I suspect the Canadian government will not want built.
It would be lovely to get Europe off of Russian energy imports.
One of the major problems of Canada is it's essentially a line of provinces east-west. It means you cannot simply route around a province with unreasonable demands, everyone must be placated, and the resource region of Alberta is seriously landlocked.
This has bred an economy of rent seekers and real estate at the expense of almost everything else. There are reasons that the best and brightest of Canada enthusiastically leave en masse to the place that Canadians claim to detest most of all, which leads to a sort of self loathing complex with the ones that stay; they are utterly mystified by the idea that anyone with any skills/talent whatsoever would want to move to Canada, it's truly mind boggling. (This is why I prefer Quebec - it's got enough people in it that really like Quebec a lot).
> you cannot simply route around a province with unreasonable demands, everyone must be placated, and the resource region of Alberta is seriously landlocked.
Retconned horseshit that emanates from idiot chambers.
The US is a big country next door, and historically the two economies and trade have been very tightly integrated. So Alberta hooks into the US pipeline system, as cooperative players in a continental energy system, and so does Ontario. There was never a critical reason to make significant East/West pipelines, in the same way that the US has loads of LNG export terminals (they were actually converted import terminals), and being connected to their LNG system meant it made little sense to spend billions of new terminals.
Not to mention some geographic issues. Running a pipeline through the Canadian shield is not a trivial matter. Possible, but it's much easier though the flyover US states.
And most hilarious of all about this, the reviled national energy program (NEP) -- you know, the one that 0% of Albertans understand but they're sure it was to screw them -- was the federal government proposing a national pipeline system. Alberta had a massive tantrum about it. Instead Alberta was constrained to selling oil at a massive discount to the US for decades.
>There are reasons that the best and brightest of Canada enthusiastically leave en masse to the place that Canadians claim to detest most of all
ROFL. Good god. The fact that you're in Quebec, and you celebrate Quebec (by far the most dysfunctional part of the country, largely a welfare state propped up by the rest of Canada, primarily Ontario), has to be the most hilarious part of this comical fan-fiction nonsense.
Now you seem to have a hilarious take on Canada, but in the real world the "West" anointed the US as the centre of power (the largest population base, unharmed by two world wars in a row). This means that people from everywhere generally centralized there, for media, for technology, and so on. Thanks to the current idiocracy and the accelerating decline of that country, the whole thing has reversed.
> largely a welfare state propped up by the rest of Canada, primarily Ontario
Aside from the wrongness of the rest of your comment, you're hilariously out of date here. Ontario has become the defining political and economic disaster area in Canada.
> Aside from the wrongness of the rest of your comment
I see you've, uh, comprehensively detailed what was wrong.
Nothing in my comment was wrong.
> Ontario has become the defining political and economic disaster area in Canada
ROFL. Christ.
Ontario's "economic disaster" contributes 2x the amount to federal coffers than Quebec does, despite only being 60% larger in population. It contributes almost 3x more than Alberta, which about tracks with the population difference. In every economic metric, Ontario obliterates Quebec.
Seeing Maple MAGA nonsense from someone living in Quebec is hilarious stuff. Quebec has always been our special little welfare state, that has a government massively funded out of proportion, largely on the backs of Ontario and BC. Having you slinging stones and talking about the greatness of Quebec is...well, it's amazing stuff.
Just don't mention the Ontario car industry, or the state of your public finances.
> Just don't mention the Ontario car industry
I mean...mention it? What? What a hilarious comment, that clearly derives from whatever right wing echo chamber idiot chamber you emerged from.
Aside from the fact that it's...fine... (protip - the automakers have largely ignored Trump and know he's going to die in a pile of his own feces and they'll move on). A gigantic new multi-billion dollar battery plant (still going ahead...hey, did multiple in Quebec get abandoned?). A new armoured vehicle plant. Two new heavy duty truck plants.
I mean, Chrysler is collapsing, but eh. They're collapsing everywhere. BYD will likely buy one of their plants.
And it's hilarious when Maple MAGA mouth-breathers always bring up the auto industry. It could disappear and we'd move on. This delusion that we're all auto workers here is comedy. I don't know a single person even peripherally related to that industry.
> or the state of your public finances.
Which makes it extra funny that Ontario bankrolls Quebec largess. I agree that should be stopped. Quebec needs to stop being the welfare project dragging the country down, which is something that would make Alberta happy as well.
> Ontario bankrolls Quebec largess
A funny way to spell Alberta.
Ontario doesn't bankroll anyone, and hasn't for decades. We all suffer the weakened CAD simply to secure votes in Ontario.
> A funny way to spell Alberta.
You are utterly clueless. Again, Ontario contributes 3x more to federal coffers than Alberta. Now extremely simple sorts look at "equalization payments" (you know, the welfare program for Quebec), and think it's somehow paid for by the "haves", but that isn't remotely how it works. Ontario and BC contribute almost all of the money that is then handed out to welfare provinces like Quebec.
> We all suffer the weakened CAD simply to secure votes in Ontario.
LOL, wtf. You really need to disengage from whatever bullshit chamber you clearly get your "knowledge" from, because this is just embarrassing nonsense.
Sort of. The referendum is unpopular and is non-binding, actually a question about whether to have a referendum. Its widely seen as a political maneuver by AB to extract pipeline concessions.
> It's just political theater
Do you think the referendum in question is not a political theater?
I don't know much, but it stands to me that the EU association is magnitudes more serious.
The EU "theater" in wonderfully bureaucratic
> where all of Canada's "energy security" is located
Alberta selling oil to USA is, by itself, like 20% of Canada's entire GDP.
And 70% of all other exports go to USA too. So yeah it is mostly just theater because there's a loud mouth idiot in the White house.
They're doing some lip-service and just hoping it will blow over when Trump is gone.
>Alberta selling oil to USA is, by itself, like 20% of Canada's entire GDP.
wow, no, it's not "like 20%" at all. not even close.
the entire oil and natural gas industry was 3.8% of canada's GDP in 2025.
how did you even come up with that number?
it is only around 5% of GDP
Trips to Canada have always left a bad taste in my mouth, but they've always been to Ontario, Quebec. I've been wondering if I'd like the people in Alberta better.
I would suggest you brush your teeth more often if you have a bad taste in your mouth after traveling.
It's something many Canadians don't want to accept, but too much of their tourist facing industry is setup to exploit and frankly con Americans.
I recall on my first trip here ending up in hospital, being mistaken for an American and shown one price list, only for my insurance company to get on the phone and promptly a new price list appeared and a lot of "We're sorry we thought you were American" from the staff.
And prior to the mobile web dealing with Ontario hotels was like haggling in a Turkish bazaar with an obnoxious layer of passive aggression on top.
When did you last visit Ontario. How was it compared to your first visit (pre-web so I am assuming a few decades ago).
Months ago. I live in Quebec (which is where the hospital incident occurred).
Now thanks to the Internet it's way harder for hotel clerks to claim prices are different, which used to be exactly what they'd do, consequently it's improved dramatically on that front. I still remember the face of an Ottawa guy decades ago confronted with a european smartphone shoved in his face to show he was lying through his teeth. He clearly wasn't ready for the whole concept.
The hospital thing is standard practice in the US. The Canadian hospitals likely have to lie to get reasonable payouts from US insurance companies.
For instance, I once needed $600 of tests at the ER. The hospital billed $80K. The insurance company paid $7K. I paid $100.
Sure, the $600 does not include the ER overhead, but the $7K was still insanely inflated. The important thing is that the money ultimately came from insurance premiums, so every middleman was able to reliably extort all patients.
> For instance, I once needed $600 of tests at the ER. The hospital billed $80K. The insurance company paid $7K. I paid $100.
The other bit of the story was "we realised you might not be American from your face when we showed you the price list". I'm guessing you are American?
You need to understand how utterly insane this sounds if you are used to European systems.
And don't get me started on the fact Canadian healthcare doesn't actually transfer between provinces.
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What does this mean?
Just getting in I faced extremely rude border agents, which was just confusing. If it hadn't been for work I would have just gone home. There were some nice people, but I felt a general unfriendliness most places I went. Maybe it was just my experience.
> Maybe it was just my experience.
It certainly hasn't been my experience visiting Ontario and Quebec. I've had nothing but good experiences. The Quebecois, especially in rural areas, are quite direct and I could maybe see that coming across as rude, but I've never felt unwelcome or a lack of friendliness there.
I've had rude border agents in many countries I've visited, and I've watched CBP officers being incredibly obnoxious to visitors entering the US. I don't think that's a Canada thing.
As a Canadian I've had pretty shit experiences with the land crossings coming back to Canada from the US. They seem to be total grumpy shitheads all around.
But at the same time I've had the absolute worst experiences crossing borders from Canada to US too. Seems like agents at the land crossings both ways just hate life or something.
And lastly, as a Prairie resident, I've felt that general unease in Ontario/Quebec as well. I think people there are just generally more bitter.
So I'd say don't take it personally, but that's only worth what you make of it I suppose.
It means they're an american who doesn't have any input, they just want to complain about canada without a reason
Stay home, Yankee.
Gladly, I have
> "work, study and live where they want on either side of the Atlantic"
Will the Canadian job market improve or suffer here? Does anyone know of any research that will determine if this would be beneficial for Canadians? Naively, I think it'll be harder to compete with Europeans for jobs.
Canada has needed more workers but is suffering from a lack of affordable($675000 average when the average family makes <$110000) housing like many places with other costs rising too. The number of housing starts has never recovered from the huge downturn around 2010.
It will definitely depend by work market, eg it's well known in France video game worker move to Quebec already.
EU is notoriously fractured and divided in the best of times, especially around membership. Importantly, many EU countries have not ratified CETA, and that was put in place in 2017.
FT is a pro transatlanticism but has a somewhat negative take on all of this
https://www.ft.com/content/2e2e0c1e-51d6-49e2-9f4a-6ef793908...
98% of CETA has been ratified. The last 2% is the hard part, but the 98% covers a lot of goods...
> EU is notoriously fractured and divided in the best of times, especially around membership.
Eh, we're less divided than people who think so realize, we're more divided than people who think we're united realize. Not really an issue on that particular case.
> Importantly, many EU countries have not ratified CETA
Like a lot of deals, including a big part of dicussion in the Canada/US talk, CETA's issues are about food.
But the thing is, unlike a lot of deal like Mercosur, CA/EU is very vast even excluding food, for BOTH sides of the talk. So I'm pretty sure we can figure things out.
The irony in this was that Canada, led by Alberta, was leaning towards a break up that would have likely led to slowly merging with the US, until someone really smart, a very bright individual, threatened them militarily.
What’s going on with HN? This article from BBC is like the 4th time in front page in HN with everyone worshipping EU with support and adoration.
And ever comment critical about this is being downvoted by bots. Since when did HN became a nonsensical propaganda machine for EU?
I read it less as support for the actual thing, and more that folks support something they think the current US administration won’t like.
I think it is support for the actual thing. Functional economies benefit startups, even if the startup is in the US and the functional parts of the market are overseas.
Current and future administrations won't like.
Or more specifically, for those paying attention many of us have to come around to the belief that it doesn't really matter who comes after Trump, We need to not be as dependent on the Americans because we can simply no longer trust them not to do it again since they already did it twice.
The issue is simply more pressing for the Canadians because they share a land border, 70% of their trade is with the US and they have threatened annexation.
It's not less pressing really for us Europeans either, a lot of people/politicians have had to ask some awkward questions like "Just how exposed are we to the Americans if they continue on this path" and the answer is one they really don't like.
The world order as it was benefited the Americans and us in myriad ways but they seem to have decided they no long want things that way so it entirely comes down to what we do in response to that.
In some ways an unreliable ally is worse than an enemy because you can generally predict what your enemies intentions will be.
It seems like a lot of Americans get discomfited when you point this out even the ones who don't support Trump/the current US Gov but it's not personal, on the scale of countries it can't really be personal.
We simply can't trust them as a country or as a government as much as we previously could and I don't see that changing for the better in at least a generation if they even want it to.
Hey, so what do y'all think it felt like back in the 30s to watch the world split between a handful of really aggressive countries and everyone else? Specifically, what do y'all think it felt like to be a non-aggressive person living in one of the handful of really aggressive countries?
The news cycle was a lot slower, and there’s a chance you wouldn’t be literate enough to read newspapers. I suspect you’d probably just carry on per usual.
> US President Donald Trump earlier called the idea "laughable" and threatened "very serious tariffs" on Europe if he considered it a "hostile act".
So if Canada tries to make friends with anyone other than the US, it's a hostile act?
Makes it all the more obvious that USA is Canada's abusive partner, that they should have broken up with a long time ago.
Carney has extremely strong support amongst the general public in Canada which hasn't been the case for the Canadian PM over the past 20+ years.
158 Canadian soldiers died defending the United States at the US's request after 9/11. Canadian fighter jets helped to patrol the skies in the US at the US's request after 9/11.
The insults coming from the US Secretary of Defence and President are not unnoticed. They are logged and remembered.
Canada and America have enjoyed the best neighbors relationship in history, but one neighbor has been playing for the neighborhood security for decades while the other stagnates.
America is at a crossroads, our debt has become a national security issue, globalism failed to make China and Russia strong democratic institutions, climate change will happen (the trump administration is preparing for it more seriously than any other) and Europe has failed to flourish enough to stand on its own two defensive feet.
As awful as trump is, we can no longer be the worlds backstop. You may have flown some planes on 9/11 but we’ve been paying to tab for 50 years. And we can’t anymore.
This is mostly a point condensed from the book “Tropic of chaos” which everyone should read.
> climate change will happen (the trump administration is preparing for it more seriously than any other)
This has to be satire surely.
We're gonna need that sense of humor as the climate shit hits the fan.
The focus towards the north (Greenland/Canada) is one potential successful post-climate-change strategy.
Control over the opened trade routes and natural resources as the northern oceans thaw will be a highly contested global issue, the type of issue that can lead to war.
Of course, this is a more charitable interpretation of long term plans than might be warranted.
Not charitable. It has been repeatedly openly stated. How much more clear could the admin be?
You have no idea what you are talking about. Armed lifeboat is a serious climate change strategy. You and I might not like it. But we are heading down the path very seriously.
> Armed lifeboat is a serious climate change strategy.
Is deliberately sinking the ship faster so we have to board said lifeboat much sooner part of that strategy?
> But we are heading down the path very seriously.
Being pushed at gunpoint, more like.
No it is a scientifically valid strategy. It contends
1) we are past the point of no return in climate change
2) climate change will radically change the nations of the earth and the viability of territories cause mass upheaval
3) this is inevitable and coordination will not work as you can’t expect nations drowning to act rationally or cooperatively.
4) prepare in any way you can as fast and aggressively as possible.
> 1) we are past the point of no return in climate change
Hmm...I wonder who did that?
Is paying taxpayer money to shut down already approved windfarms a good way to prepare for climate change? A few extra years to prepare that "armed lifeboat" are completely unnecessary?
I mean in a way it's true. MAGA is a death cult and they want to hasten the apocalypse, which is why MAGA is such good bed fellows with US big tech as they too also want to hasten the apocalypse.
These people fervently believe that they will prosper once the earth is destroyed, so please trust that they will do everything in their lives to make it so.
There is only one country that Canada needs to be secure from and they just used up most of their missiles in Iran.
You have never been "the worlds's backstop".
If that is so onerous, multiple EU countries should get nuclear missiles and make an EU NATO. But you don't want that. You want the dollar propped up irrationally by your military promises and you want NATO and non-NATO proxies against Russia ans China.
The promises incidentally fail yet again in Iran, where the Saudis already make other treaties with Turkey and Pakistan.
> 158 Canadian soldiers died defending the United States at the US's request after 9/11. Canadian fighter jets helped to patrol the skies in the US at the US's request after 9/11.
Bad idea. Canada (as well as all other nations) should let the US fight and lose its wars by itself.
This was under Jean Chrétien who recently gave a speech: https://www.cpac.ca/headline-politics/episode/jean-chretien-...
He supported US in Afghanistan, but refused to support war in Iraq since he didn't consider there to be sufficient evidence of WMD
Agreed, and the possibility of visa free travel to the EU, plus the removal of live/work barriers is appealing. The USA really comes off as the spurned ex that calls you drunk in the middle of the night.
is it not visa free already for most of the states anyway?
Generally it is auto approved for Canadians, but you will soon need to do an "ETIAS travel authorization".
Canada actually implemented their ETA way before the EU did theirs.
Yes but with that you’d be able to have a work permit as well!
Research the "Monroe doctrine"... by which I mean, don't just look up a one paragraph summary, spend a bit of time with it. A few pages of text at least. Ideally in a modern formulation you should encounter the term "World Island" without having directly searched for it and how the modern iteration of the Monroe doctrine is a reaction to that in a way that the original didn't have to contend with.
I'm not doing advocacy here, I'm giving pointers on how to come to a deeper understanding of what is going on.
It is also important to understand that the EU is directly attacking this doctrine with this proposal. You are free to agree with the EU. Again, I'm just giving something to guide people to a deeper understanding of what is going on beyond the surface level playground politics of it all. There's more going on than that.
(Personally I would say I "disagree" with the Monroe doctrine but the sort of national/international structure I would actually want is not even remotely on the table, so... my opinion is thereby of even less import than a random other opinion drawn from "the masses" for choosing "E, none of the above" when that was not given as an option in the first place.)
I think you've said nothing here other "Look up a good summary of the Monroe doctrine, with which I mildly disagree"
You elided if you want to understand what is going on more deeply, which is a rather important part.
I say that precisely because I know that in reality most people aren't that interested. Which feel like I'm insulting people or something, but it's just the reality, we don't all have time to dig into absolutely everything all the time, and if you're not interested that's fine. But if you are, this is the best pathway to understanding this at a deeper level than the playground level.
What arrogance.
TLDR; The dollar is the global currency of record, the US became the richest country in the world, and Stalin didn't get Europe and Japan. The massive export market and global security was the payoff.
The trade deficit and debt is in USD it's a line in the ledger that is somewhat fine and sustainable as long as the world stays on the USD as the currency of record. Countries for now are happy to keep storing their reserves in US bonds - Canada holds 600-700 billion in US debt. Japan over a trillion.
This is a direct stab at the US imperialist faction — not MAGA, who want the US to break up with the EU.
I genuinely don’t understand this move through the lens of realpolitik: they’re mad at Trump, so they’re going to offend CFR et al who are aligned on Fortress America and neo-empire by threatening to take a critical vassal for the EU?
Okay — but you just turned being mad at MAGA into the MIC deep state viewing you as an enemy and therefore further military alliance with any EU member unviable. All because the EU couldn’t stomach four years of crass taunts from a TV conman.
Total MAGA victory.
> So if Canada tries to make friends with anyone other than the US, it's a hostile act?
I believe the terms in human relationships are coercive control and social isolation.
USA has always been very aggressive about territory and hostile to Europe in the Americas. The Canada vs UK vs EU relationship seems more interesting to me.
Sometimes the winning move is to not play at all. He's finding out what happens when people stop playing his game.
Pretty much exactly this.
A whole lot of Trump's psychology has always been "it's your fault I hurt you" for the longest time — it's a very clear undercurrent in how he treated his first wife.
He's an abuser. And now so is the USA.
As I said it in another post, what does Trump expect? His negotiations are all stick and no carrot.
Canada is bound to look for new trade opportunities in the face of that.
You make a deal with Trump, it's always worse than what you had previously.
Then, no mater what you do, he breaks the deal 3 months later with some kind of implied military threat if you complain.
All the comparisons with personal relationships here are silly. This isn't a marital split. This someone who thinks they're the only customer saying they don't want to buy something and the vendor saying fair enough, I'll sell it to someone else.
Trump lacks the introspection to realise that he's the bully at the playground that everyone is distancing themselves from.
He somehow thinks that he's going to make the US more respected by constantly jabbing at his allies
> So if Canada tries to make friends with anyone other than the US, it's a hostile act?
I don't think anyone really says it's an hostile act but both countries, Canada and the US will have to decide what it means for their ongoing relationship.
Canada is free to get closer to Europe and the US is free to be displeased about it.
Maybe it works out well for Canada or maybe it doesn't.
> Makes it all the more obvious that USA is Canada's abusive partner
Why anthropomorphize geopolitics?
This is just just a big fish throwing its weight around like all big fishes do. Russia does it with its neighbors, China does it as well and India and Europe are not shy about it either.
It's just the name of the game and its been happening since the dawn of time.
Some states use force, others bribe or cajole but in the end they all try to influence their neighbors in a way that suits their interests especially if these neighbors are smaller in terms of population/economy/military etc...
The fact that so many people are shocked by such news these days is because everyone drank the cool aid of the End of History and forgot that spheres of influence still exists and that the rule of law was nothing more than gentleman's agreement that could be thrown out of the window at a moment's notice without second thoughts.
> I don't think anyone really says it's an hostile act
Trump does. His inner circle does. His supporters do.
> Canada and the US will have to decide what it means for their ongoing relationship.
Sounds like an abusive husband's version of "think of what this will do to the children."
> Why anthropomorphize geopolitics?
Because some people need to have complex issues explained to them in ways that are simple to understand. Particularly when it comes to issues involving Trump politics, the people who desperately need to understand these issues are those who also seem to need the issues explained to them like they are a fourth-grader.
Hence, the replies you have been seeing.
It's pretty much the exact same playbook that Russia used against Ukraine.
Fortunately the US already fails in its first special military operation in Iran, so it cannot launch a second one in Canada to protect the English speaking population in Canada.
> cannot
Why not?
This comment[0] on HN from a while back marks the parallels between the two situations very clearly.
It's very frustrating talking about this subject with Americans online[1]. In general they seem to have blinders on regarding the magnitude of the consequences of their democratic choice in leadership.
I get a sense that a feeling of learned helplessness has beset the American people and that they're not able to imagine a world of agency and action against authoritarianism.
I don't know what can shake them out of their torpor, but I do know that the longer they take to wake up the higher the price of action will be.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43485649#43487443
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49403201
> It's very frustrating talking about this subject with Americans online[1]. In general they seem to have blinders on regarding the magnitude of the consequences of their democratic choice in leadership.
If polls are to be believed, the majority of Americans do not, in fact, fit that description.
Trump has already been threatening Canada and EU at various times already. Why should they assume a) this will be any different b) he'll stop if they do what he wants?
"No Russian leader could stand idly by in the face of steps toward NATO membership for Ukraine. That would be a hostile act toward Russia"
https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraines-future-in-nato-prec...
edit since I guess the timestamp isn't visible to everyone: Jul 12, 2023, 5:56 PM GMT+2
They're not even hiding it any more. Look who paid for one of his sons wedding...
This was such a weird gesture. Why did they need anyone to pay for the wedding and why did it have to be someone with ties to Putin?
Why in the world do these articles not have published dates on them?
I see "Jul 12, 2023, 5:56 PM GMT+2" right before "After this week's NATO summit in Lithuania..."
Literally states '1 hour ago' below the author.
I try not to take anything Trump say too seriously, but we have to remember that the USians chose him... twice.
Why would you not take him seriously?
Because we have decades of evidence to show that he's incredibly stupid?
Because he can't string together a coherent sentence?
That doesn't really matter. What matters is that he commands the most powerful (probably?) offensive force on the planet and has already shown that he is more than willing to use it to achieve his nonsense objectives.
Personally, I take everything he says and does seriously. I advise non-citizens visiting to turn their social media to private and bring a burner phone to immigration checkpoints. For citizens, turning off your phone should be enough.
I think a lot of us outside the US will go further and simply never visit the US ever again. That certainly applies to me despite having spent quite a lot of time in the US and having ex-colleagues who I regard as friends there.
He can. His charistma is a large part of why he was elected.
Not taking him seriously already cost the Democrats two presidential terms.
> His charistma is a large part of why he was elected.
He has the charisma of a mouldy grapefruit. It certainly wasn't his charisma.
He was elected because he was able to convince many, many people that there are simple solutions to complex problems and that he was the only person in the world "brave" enough to implement them.
But he's using that babble to demand very real, very grow up, wars.
It doesn't matter. L'etat, c'est Trump.
> So if Canada tries to make friends with anyone other than the US, it's a hostile act?
If your ex starts dating your best friend directly after breakup, would you consider it a hostile act?
I might, but that wouldn't make me right or make my ex unjustified. It might just be another instance of me being an asshole.
Who is the ex and who is the best friend here? America has broken up with both Canada and EU?
Luckily states are not hormones-driven romcom protagonists.
You mean the same best friend that you unilaterally groped[1], shit-talked[2], undermined[3] and tried to drag into a brawl[4]?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_crisis
[2] https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-nato-policy-def...
[3] https://www.cadtm.org/Trump-Europe-and-the-international-neo...
[4] https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/31/europe/trump-lashes-out-europ...
>If your ex starts dating your best friend directly after breakup, would you consider it a hostile act?
"breakup" is doing a huge amount of counterfactual sanewashing here.
> US President Donald Trump earlier called the idea "laughable" and threatened "very serious tariffs" on Europe if he considered it a "hostile act".
There's a lawsuit [1] on the way related to the Epstein files so this Canada-EU topic gives Trump the perfect opportunity to divert the attention.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/09/lawsuit-trump-do...
Don’t forget granting partial control of that other strait to the Houthis a few days ago.
Closer to home: there have been a record number of firefighter fatalities this year. It is partially climate change, and partially redirecting national guard troops to harass folks in DC and pick up litter.
According to this morning’s news, he’s also micromanaging of firefighting efforts to make them less effective, more expensive, more dangerous, and to maximize future fire risk.
Basically he’s dictated head on attacks to fire fronts, and complete suppression. All experts and firefighters agree it is better to contain the borders of the fires instead, and only fight fires on the interior if it makes ecological sense or protects buildings, lives, etc. (After all, the burn on the interior is necessary for forest health, and also removes fuel.)
Then there’s the NASA thing, where he didn’t want to pay $10M for building maintenance, so instead put $10B of active missions at risk, and threw out > $100M of specialized equipment (or auctioned it off at tenths of pennies on the dollar; probably to US adversaries).
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What's the best estimate for US to recover from non-stop levels of stupid?
It's at least a decade but now I'm starting to think two decades
And the problem is since people have short memories there's going to be a Trump 2.0 doing a full speedrun back to destroying democracy as hard and as fast as possible, fueled by Heritage Foudation
So we may be recovering every decade at this point
I mean Bush plowed the economy into the ground plus stop-loss endless war and yet here we are again
The US is always going to be a large powerful and influential country, Geography and natural resources and a high education base ensure that.
What it won't be is as influential as it was for a long time, if ever.
The damage isn't a "Next President" problem, it's already a generational problem.
The international rules/trade based order was predicated on both sides agreeing that those were the rules, when one side unilaterally decides to tear it up and then demand the same advantages they had before they tore it up, the other has to respond, it can't ignore it.
They chose to open Pandora's box on this one, the rest of us are just figuring out what that looks like going forwards.
I have a litmus test for democrats. If they pass, it could dig out in a decade or two. If not, it is probably game over:
Do you support pursuing criminal charges for current members of the executive branch and their counterparts in private industry? Do you support pursuing maximum sentences, including asset seizure and the death penalty? Do you support suspending or otherwise not honoring presidential pardons? Will you cooperate with ICCC warrants?
If you think my litmus test is too harsh, consider the fact that the Bush family made its fortune by illegally selling to the Nazis, was caught literally organizing a military coup in the US, and was instrumental in ripping out a perfectly good national passenger train network.
In response they got a slap on the wrist and used their illegal gains to control the white house. Twice.
> What's the best estimate for US to recover from non-stop levels of stupid?
I think it'll get much worse before we can even hope it gets a tiny bit better. Politics are fucked, education is fucked, petrol is fucked, the stock market is extra fucked, morales are fucked, etc.
So if you mean "when do we start winning like in the 80s", it's probably never, too many things are breaking down or on the verge of breaking down, things with way too much momentum to fix by simply getting the other side of the political spectrum in control for 4 years. Not even talking about China planning for the next 100 years when Trump can't even determine if he'll shit his pants in the next 15 minutes
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Account created 2 minutes ago. Are political bots hitting hacker news as well?
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Better integration and more free trade is an easy win-win scenario for both sides.
It’s a win-win scenario for wealthy people. Poor people always get screwed in any kind of free trade deal, since prices of goods always rise to the highest possible point in the entire free trade zone.
That is just not true. FTAs lower trade barriers on imported goods, leading to consumer welfare gains from increase in product variety, better quality products and lower prices for existing products.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20161014STO...
That’s as if you linked an article from Meta that says Facebook is good for you.
Please, I live in Spain. I know what getting screwed with prices looks like.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
Care to explain how Asia comes into picture. Please.
Can the blue states of USA become associate members too? He has declared that the blue states are the "enemy from within" and may launch the military against us soon.
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/30/nx-s1-5557232/hegseth-general...
Unfortunately, the Constitution (Article 1 Section 10) forbids states from entering into alliances and treaties with other countries, or with one another, without the explicit permission of Congress.
Yeah, but the federal government is completely ignoring the constitution.
Which amendment contains the clause claiming the rest of the contract survives if parts are just unilaterally deleted by one side?
Law also prevents US military from being deployed against citizens, that isn't stopping Trump. In fact, Trump has asked for the constitution to be set aside, during his campaign.
The Posse Comitatus Act makes it a criminal statute that bars anyone from willfully using federal military forces — the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Space Force — "to execute the laws" unless expressly authorized by the Constitution or an act of Congress.
There are no blue states that would want to join the EU. The big ones would rather go independent. EU doesn't offer much
Would it be possible to offer anything more substantive? For example:
1) Why would none of the ~20-25 blue states want to join the EU? Why would it be preferable for the big ones to go it alone in an increasingly fractious world?
2) In what way does the EU not offer much? If this is the case, how did they end up with 28 members joining, another 5 or so waiting to do so, and only 1 ever leaving?
The point isn't about being pro/negative the EU, it's about providing something thoughtful, as opposed to just throwing out your opinions.
While I would welcome Canada as an associate EU member, one must be aware of the possibility that this is political theater in order to sell more Ukraine support to the Canadian public. Canada proposes to join EU funding for the Ukraine war, so both the EU and Canada follow literally Pete Hegseth's instructions from 2025 for burden sharing in NATO and finance the US proxy war:
https://www.ft.com/content/9cd8cc79-e98a-449f-a903-609b034a5...
So both the EU and Canada are compliant US vassals despite the talk.
I don’t think you understand that the EU and Canada both have deep vested interests in protecting Ukrainian sovereignty. Canada shares a large Arctic border with Russia, and is geopolitically motivated to prevent Russian expansionism. The EU is motivated to defend its eastern flank, and impose cost on a Russia that may just eye the Baltic states next.
Of course they have an interest. Still, the US provoked the proxy war and should pay for it. I don't begrudge Ukraine getting money from the US.
Why doesn't the US provoke Russia in Siberia? We know the answer: There are no proxies.
Reaction from the Canadian opposition leader:
https://x.com/PierrePoilievre/status/2100274078066036766This is the same PP that grasped defeat in the face of victory, and is continually losing support, relegating himself to the same position of the Reform party that it was in the 90's. The same Polly that lost his riding last election, and had to have one handed to him on a silver spoon. I would take his opinion with a grain of salt.
Not just losing support, but his poor leadership managed to hand the liberals a majority months after the election.
This is what most people in canada think of PP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ysqevg-jbAA
It sounds like they need to read what an associate membership is before they complain about it then
It doesn't seem like anyone knows what it is yet since it's a new thing. But free movement of people for work is mentioned in almost every article about it.
It would need to be actually negotiated and stuff, but the opposition quote is just agreeing with all the public statements I have seen from the EU and Canadian leadership.
So, I guess the opposition supports associate membership in everything but name.
This is Conservative playbook 101.
It doesn't matter what the truth of the matter is. What Dear Leader says is used as a scare tactic and marching orders for the underlings to believe and repeat. If you live/interact with conservative people long enough you see the pattern. There's absolute trust in what their leadership says, but skepticism for any criticism of those same talking points.
So all this tweet is doing is seeding doubt, and distrust among the electorate. It doesn't have to be true, but if the goal is to maintain control it looks like this. The Canadian Conservatives are still extremely pro-USA but have learned to keep their opinions close to the chest because they're currently politically unpoular.
Schengen and EU isn’t the same.
Seems like he's attacking a bunch of strawmen.
Classic Conservative move of building a strawman and arguing against it. None of these deals would involve taxes, EU "laws" (whatever that means) or border agreements. He's using the boogeyman of "ew brown people" to scare his base.
Apparently, even Canadian conservatives are happy to grovel at the feet of the Burger Reich and their supreme leader.
> None of these deals would involve taxes, EU "laws" (whatever that means) or border agreements.
It's a bit rich to say this when nothing yet is known.
If Carney or the EU did not want the oppositions to start speculating regarding what it entails, maybe they should have talked about exactly what an associate membership means and what of sort of things could be expected from such a move.
Maybe they are wrong or maybe you are and maybe it will involve EU taxes and EU regulations or maybe since you are absolutely certain of what it entails you have some sort of insider information that nobody else has?
Until such a time as everyone knows and understand what a possible associate membership means for the EU and Canada, then nothing should be considered off the table and it is justified to ask questions and get some clarifications on all of this.
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> EU open-border immigration policies should be imposed on Canadians
Not sure what's meant by that... People won't start swimming over the atlantic ocean. And flights to Canada aren't really cheap, by any means.
What, €500 for a return flight? That’s millions of people with no money and no job able to fly to Canada and look for one - putting your hands on €500 isn’t impossible for anyone. The flights are so cheap as to be almost irrelevant for anyone motivated to go there. Plus Canadian wages are much higher, including tips. Getting a hospitality job in Canada pays about €500 a week in untaxed tips if you’re working hard anywhere half-decent. Or at least canadian wages are currently much higher - low skilled labour migrating there from the EU will push wages down and down, same as it always does.
Canada's net immigration (mostly from east Asia) was crazy high for a few years after COVID. Clearly enough people can afford the airfare.
Hang on you're saying people granted legal permission to fly to a country, specifically to immigrate to that country, also have the money to fly there? Crazy coincidence, that.
Canada doesn't have "open borders" or "free mobility" with "east asia" in the way that people are boogeymanning.
The closest approximation is the united states under NAFTA.
There is lots of poverty in America, but the border doesn't appear to have an issue. I fail to see how this would be much different (except more difficult due to an ocean and better security/screening checks on airport arrivals).
> EU open-border immigration policies
what's that?
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He's not wrong. I have a suspicion this EU idea is a way to backdoor immigration increases - something the Trudeau government was very keen on but was scaled back by Carney. Largely because immigration has become a hot-button issue in Canada and was partly responsible for Polilievre's popularity last election. Joining a treaty where another governing body would set the criteria for immigration and Canada just has to accept it due to freedom of movement within the EU is one way to route around the whole thing politically and make it much harder to change in the future.
If this is the motivation, it's a grossly undemocratic move.
I don't get how folks who hyperventilate about Trump being a threat to democracy can look at stuff like this and cheer.
The free movement (if it is in picture) might be restricted to citizens. I think we need to wait for more details.
Absolutely true. I suppose I'm just seeing the ways that this could be abused by our political leaders.
The question is if it would allow all the wealthy Canadians to finally leave for Cyprus without paying exit taxes.
IMHO, it would be a win even if it allowed movement between Canada and the EU as freely as Canadians and Americans can currently move between Canada and the US. That would give Canadian snowbirds easier (longer) access to warm EU destinations, while those destinations would benefit from the additional revenue.
In winter even the warm bits of the EU aren't all that warm either, and no one complains about the cold like a (non B.C.) Canadian encountering European winter humid cold for the first time.
Europeans go to Thailand, even Latam etc. It's why so many were killed in the Indian Ocean tsunami.
Scaled back immigration happened under Trudeau just before Carney took over.
This guy isn't serious and should have resigned a long time ago. Zero credibility.
In other, less covered news, Trump and Rubio are misusing their positions to loot Cuba:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/17/trump-marco-...
They are currently targeting civilian populations there by weaponizing access to necessities. They have intentionally created multiple humanitarian crises, then rerouted food and energy imports through Florida companies for private benefit.
This is a long way of asking: Can the US west coast become an associate EU member too? Here in California, the Sierra Nevada and deserts of the southwest are already 99% of the wall we’d need to protect our border from maga zealots.
I'm sorry, but nothing is going to happen. Canada and the EU made up an imaginary category for good vibes and to market some likely very limited cooperation in arms development or maybe research programs. We already have CETA and I doubt any "associate membership" will be more consequential like that.
In two years this will have fizzled out like any other marketing blitzes by the EU (remember Gaia-X?). I say this as a disillusioned EU citizen. This institution doesn't have any ambition left.
It certainly has the ambition to expand its power base and reduce its oversight.
According to the FT, Von der Leyen didn't really get the OK from member states before coming up with this. Let's see what happens in practice, the trade agreement from 2017 hasn't even been ratified yet.
Well, Finland's gonna insist on getting Celebrini in the trade.
Well done for making the first comment in this whole discussion about the one area of integration that Canadians will actually care about.
Is this some kind of astroturf campaign? It's like the 4th time this topic sourcing a BBC article has appeared on the first page in about as many days and the comments on it are all the same drab, short and repetitive expressions of support. This really doesn't seem like the kind of material that normally interests HN users.
I assume there are a lot of Canadians and Europeans (myself included) on HN, who like some positive news for a change.
This seems like US centric view. It’s big news, and highly relevant to tech workers across Canada and Europe.
I'm not even in the US. I just think it's absurd that minor variations on this news keeps ranking so high and a lot of the comments are basically "Good", "Great", "I support this".
Right, we are only interested in anything AI
Don't forget written in Rust
When you write longer comments you just get flagged down to -4 unless they’re blindly positive.
Maybe the US Admin is deeply unpopular, and people are happy to discuss all the ways in which it is wrong and shortsighted?
Shacked to a corpse! Europe where is your NVIDIA, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, OpenAI, SpaceX ... You have high power cost, high electric cost, high taxes; What fertile soil!
don't forget high life expectancy!
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Without commenting on the EU, particularly, I would be concerned if I were a Canadian about Carney's commitment to globalism when the degenerate cases have become so common.
It's a weird two-front war where people tend to answer the social question and ignore the economic one, but the economic question has not done any favors to the EU or the US for that matter
what does that mean? People should never have friends because some people are jerks?
Self-isolation (whether a nation or a person) is not a good solution to hypothetical bad actors. Society is built on cooperation and trust
Can you share some of these degenerate cases?
Well, AfD winning elections, Hungary just getting rid of Orban, Slovakia being at risk, you know in general Trump like parties but in Europe.
Ah, no who am I kidding. These usually worry about the opposite. What if EU manages to resist to those projects and remains liberal democracies?
Czechia electing Babis who invited nazis into coalition...
But I don't think you can just elect Hitler in every nation and then get them to cooperate. They will inevitably want more and when they do they become aggressive. At which point I guess people will reconsider.
Smells like a long-term attempt to break the EU from within TBH.
Can you share some of these degenerate cases?
> It's a weird two-front war
Who are the adversaries?
Your argument is that some vague hypothetical bad thing could happen to Canada if they diversified their trade partners, so they should just accept economic terrorism from DC and not attempt to support the parts of their economy that already rely on imports/exports?
That is a strange take.
You call it globalism, when it is in practice having good trade relations.
And the opposite case is also a quick way to degenerate cases: if Canada devalued cooperation, what is the argument for provinces to not do the same? And thus it would only fuel Quebec and Alberta separatism.
You already see it with Brexit which is clearly opening further "us-vs-them" outlooks in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.