U.S. President Donald Trump’s negotiating team is demanding that all North American-made autos contain at least 50 per cent U.S. content, firing the opening salvo in a battle over the future of the pact governing continental trade.
American and Mexican negotiators hunkered down in Mexico City this week to start a review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and the U.S. announced plans for two further rounds of bilateral talks that do not include Canada.
It’s finally time for Prime Minister Mark Carney to declare the U.S. ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra persona non grata. Or, at the very least, call him on the carpet, as he recently did with the Israeli ambassador following Israel’s ruthless attacks on a human rights flotilla that included some Canadians.
This time, Hoekstra’s complete lack of suitability for the job has crossed a red line.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Canada has put more than $65 billion toward defence and security over the past year and reached NATO’s 2 per cent of GDP benchmark — but that is no longer enough for Washington.
The United States has paused its participation in the Permanent Joint Board on Defense (PJBD), a World War II–era U.S.-Canada defence board.
Prime Minister Mark Carney told a crowd of New York industry titans and financiers on Thursday that Canada and the U.S. need to pursue a new partnership — a bilateral relationship premised not on how things were done in the past but one where a stronger, more independent Canada can selectively help “make America great again.”
Carney said as U.S. President Donald Trump prompts “tectonic shifts” in trade, and as the world becomes “more divided and dangerous,” Canada must focus more on “taking care of ourselves” and building up at home by embracing its status as an energy superpower.
But that doesn’t mean Canada wants to close itself off from the U.S., Carney said in lunchtime remarks to about 200 attendees at the city’s Yale Club.
While Prime Minister Mark Carney is headed to New York to pitch Canada as a place to invest, he’s doing everything he can to avoid landing a deal with the Donald Trump administration. Carney and his government in Ottawa are avoiding any serious talks with the Americans, while also taking steps to ensure the Trump administration, and even many Democrats, are annoyed with Canada’s trading positions.
Brookfield is counting on Carney.
Canadians increasingly believe U.S. tariffs are here to stay despite repeated promises from Prime Minister Mark Carney that Ottawa can negotiate a better trade deal with Washington, according to newly released Privy Council research.
Blacklock’s Reporter says federal focus groups found little confidence the Liberal government would succeed in convincing the United States to eliminate tariffs on Canadian goods, with many participants saying the measures are now a permanent part of American economic policy.
I get the feeling that the LPC and their media are running a psyop attempting to convince Canadians they are upbeat about the future.
Record insolvencies, youth fleeing for the US where unlike Canada they have a shot at owning a home and building a future, a growing number of households with food and rent exceeding monthly income, criminal governance by a business and political elite that have used mass immigration for their own monetary gain and agendas, foreign criminals waltzing into our nation and receiving a slap on the wrist for their crimes so their immigration status isn’t compromised.
I could go on.
There is a reason the LPC wants to limit free speech.
When I visited the Vancouver office of OUTtv, an LGBTQ+ specialty network, in 2020, I found it across the street from a flooring company with a big, serious sign reading “BC Hardwood.” It was an unintentional reminder of the network’s less glamorous channel.
“HARDtv was a porn service,” said Brad Danks, OUTtv’s chief executive. “I couldn’t wait to get rid of it.”
Porn had been a bit of a problem. HARDtv was formed in 2005 after OUTtv, then called PrideVision, spun off its porn content in part to placate cable companies. But the main, porn-less channel still suffered in visibility, grouped with adult channels nonetheless. That exposed the real problem, that content must bow to distribution. OUTtv fought Shaw (now part of Rogers Communications Inc.) all the way to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is demanding Prime Minister Mark Carney step in and overrule the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) as it forces mostly American web giants pay more to fund homegrown media content.
In an interview with CBC News, Poilievre said the CRTC’s decision to triple the revenue streaming firms like Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime must set aside to fund Canadian programming is akin to a tax on consumers and cannot stand.
Pete Hoekstra does not mince words.
A close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, the 72-year-old Republican politician has developed a reputation for speaking bluntly, especially when it comes to the Canada-U.S. relationship.
When he welcomed Radio-Canada to the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa for a sit-down interview earlier this week, Hoekstra offered a few compliments, describing Canada as “an awesome friend” with whom “American businesses really enjoy doing business.”
Like it or not the Liberal-Left will one day have to face facts and acknowledge that most of Canada’s problems stem from their beloved Liberal government and their corporate cronies and not from Trump.
Elbows Up Suckers!
Prime Minister Mark Carney has spent much of the past year warning that Canada’s close economic integration with the United States has become a weakness that must be corrected. Earlier this month, he began to change his tune.
Speaking to an audience of Liberal supporters in Toronto two weeks ago, he said that Canada “remains open to deeper integration” with the United States in certain sectors, “including options for Fortress North America.”
“To be clear, those offers are on the table,” he said. “If that route is not ultimately possible, we will invest heavily in new markets and products.”
The Trump administration’s decision this week to “suspend” the 86-year-old Permanent Joint Board on Defence sent some of us scurrying back to our well-thumbed copies of “The Good Allies,” the late Tim Cook’s study of the wartime alliance between Canada and the United States.
The joint board on defence, which the Americans clearly no longer regard as “permanent,” has (or had) its origins in that alliance. It was a forum for Canadians and Americans, mostly senior military leaders, to hash out common defence issues a couple of times a year.
Wait till the CUSMA review.
The absolutely horrible decision by the CRTC to try to force online streamers to pay 15% of their revenues to fund Canadian content wasn’t the only bad decision on Thursday. The CRTC also decided to continue to stick it to Canada’s traditional broadcasters by keeping outdated spending requirements on them.
The only difference is that the CRTC reduced the requirements that traditional broadcasters need to pay from 30-45% of their revenues down to just 25% of their revenues.
The Pentagon wants to see Canada articulate a clear plan on how the country intends to meet NATO’s new military spending benchmark before resuming binational defence planning co-operation.
The absence of a plan to spend 3.5 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product on the military, plus an additional 1.5 per cent of GDP on defence infrastructure, appears to be at the heart of this week’s suspension of the U.S.–Canada Permanent Joint Board on Defence (PJBD).
Senior Pentagon officials, speaking on background Thursday to mostly Canadian journalists, also cited the absence of a decision on whether to proceed with the full purchase of American-made F-35 fighter jets as another major irritant.
OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — Large online streaming services must contribute 15% of their Canadian revenues to Canadian content, the country’s federal broadcast regulator said Thursday.
That figure is three times the 5% initial contribution requirement the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, CRTC, set out in 2024, which is being challenged in court by U.S.-based major streamers, including Apple, Amazon and Spotify.
The CRTC made the decision as part of its implementation of the Online Streaming Act, which the U.S. has identified as a trade irritant ahead of trade negotiations with Canada.
Thanks Carney, you sure a master negotiator.
The Pentagon’s May 18 decision to pause U.S. participation in the Permanent Joint Board on Defence should not be treated as a routine bureaucratic dispute. The board is old, but not irrelevant. It sits inside the history of Canada–U.S. continental defence and carries symbolic weight beyond its meeting schedule.
The United States framed the pause as a response to Canada’s failure to make credible progress on defence commitments. That explanation may be partly true, but it is unlikely to be the whole story. The timing matters. The decision lands just weeks before the review of the Canada-United-States-Mexico Agreement, known in Washington as USMCA and in Canada as CUSMA, begins on July 1. It also comes as the United States reorganizes defence policy around homeland security, Western Hemisphere control, allied burden sharing, and deterrence of China.
