Seems it was a waste of our time and money. If anything, Canada should be asking the USA to increase their own border security as guns and drugs come into Canada at a much larger scale. And why even have a fentanyl czar etc if none of our actions will stop the tariffs? This was never about the border or drugs but Trump said jump and Canada asked How high?
So. We don’t have a fentanyl “czar” we have Erin O’Gorman President of the Canada Border Services Agency who has been in the position since 2022 and was not appointed at the behest of Trump. The whole situation with the bleed of illegal guns USA has been something we’ve advocated for for a long time but the US tends to not take Canadian affairs very seriously because we are effectively a very small country with only marginally more population than the state of California. Honestly, we’ve never been prioritized as Americans cannot be made to care that they are shit neighbours.
Additional boarder Enforcement was approved 6 months ago when Trump was elected due to the possibility of another influx of immigrants fleeing the US which happened the first time Trump was in office due to proposed travel bans. It is here to stay as instability in the US is rising. We also dropped the requirements for recruitment to branches of the military because we are taking these threats seriously.
Trump essentially just threw a tantrum, we told him we would cover it because he was asking for things already in progress but what he wanted was to crow his strong man tactics to the media which is what he got.
Do not be fooled by media exaggerating the “wins” of Trump. He’s just using flash and glitter and misdirection.
The US economy is about to crash hard. You bought yourselves a month to diversify with some political theatre.
I’m not doubting you on the future crash, but what are you basing this one? Feels like they’ve been saying there would be a crash for like 5 years now.
Canada needs to treat US as an enemy. Make friends/neutrality with all of US’s enemies. Not doing so is begging them to stop abusing us, and just plays into their longer game of wearing us down until we accept more sycophantic compliance that is never, and never will be, rewarded. I get that we have a Ukrainian voting block that fully supports having destroyed Ukraine out of soviet era hatred, and we have decades of brainwashing towards accepting the US’s enemies as our own, but no Canadian can be serious about their anger at a warmongering threat if they are too desperate to return to the subservient colonial status that US has always demanded.
Being serious about our sovereignty needs nuclear weapon protections from new allies. Anything else is just whinning until we lose.
Canada asked How high?
This isn’t true. Canada re-affirmed that it was going to spend money that had already been allocated and agreed to join a task force that was a Canadian proposal to begin with. The only new thing was appointing a fentanyl “czar,” which is insignificant. Mexico similarly gave up nothing new. Let’s not help Trump spin his failures into victories.
It’s Canada benefiting from the money that was already allocated or was that done in the first place to appease the States?
If it wasn’t for Canada’s benefit then we definately should reallocate it if the tariffs actually happen this time.
Even the “czar” was not really new. We just put a name to that title to make them happy.
We really need to avoid the use of Russian ideology now though. Things have gotten so much worse.
Trump wants to do an aluminum deal with Russia to take the pressure off the damage done by his aluminum tariffs on Canada. He is literally aligning with Russia to attack Canada.
What a world.
They also just made a deal with Belarus to allow them to export potash which is currently almost entirely supplied by Canada:
In exchange for the release of an undefined number of political prisoners, the U.S. is willing to ease sanctions on Belarusian banks and potash, the New York Times (NYT) reported on Feb. 15, citing unnamed officials in contact with Smith on Feb. 13.
It’s incredible, really. Trump is single-handedly rewriting the world alliances so that former allies are becoming enemies, who are now relying on former enemies to become allies that look to take advantage of each other.
At the way things are going, maybe the US will be the next member of BRICS.
Totally. But I think a better way of thinking about it is that autocrats and oligarchs are collaborating to destroy global democracy and entrench their power as a global class. I don’t think this generation of autocrat cares about nation or country the way they used to. Trump very much views Putin and the Russian oligarchs as the same kind of thing as himself and as having the same interests.
Yeah, we delayed it by a month without really doing anything. All his “demands” were met superficially.
Actually, the money we allocated to border control occurred in December 2024, at least a month before Trump threatened tariffs. Trudeau then gave it a fun name (Fentanyl Czar) and Trump accepted that as yielding to his demands. We didn’t budge an inch, but we bought ourselves a month.
And we also bought ourselves the perception of being the “reasonable ones”, with the US being even more blatantly painted as flagrant deal-breakers.
That will be useful as we build new alliances with the rest of the world.
And while they try to make new deals.
And while they try to make new deals.
Who in their right mind would make a deal with a country/president who casually breaks deals whenever they feel like it?
Unless that other party is completely manipulating Trump in the way Putin routinely does…
We allocated $1.3b in early December as a response to Trump’s initial tariff threat.
Monday’s 270-page budget document outlined key new expenditures including C$1.3 billion for border agencies over six years, an attempt to avert Trump’s threat of 25% tariffs unless the flow of migrants and fentanyl over the crossing is halted.
We budged.
I don’t think it was the wrong choice, but I don’t think it had the desired effect.
I see the other side of that where we’re upping border control in case Trump decides he wants to invade. That’s not a bad thing.
I mean even if he doesn’t invade, stopping the drugs and guns coming north from the US isn’t necessarily a bad thing
And you think that allocation was unrelated to Trump?
This isn’t about fentanyl. More flows into Canada from the USA than to the USA. It was just a petty excuse to start mounting pressure on Canada in a long game to attempt annexation. Trump has made this abundantly clear and even said there’s nothing Canada can do to avoid tarriffs.
More (illegal) migration into Canada than in other direction. I didn’t know if same applies to fentanyl, but US production of fentanyl far exceeds any Canadian smuggling.
Fentanyl problem is one of accidental overdoses. It is used in hospitals in both Canada and US bc it is cheapest opiate dose. Either eliminating heroin, or diluting fentanyl down to heroin size dose, or making controlled opiate dose/quality pills more available, would solve the overdose problem,
Allowing US to blame Canada for fentanyl is allowing them to complain about any other lie.
Well he has made his statement that joining the US will stop the tariffs but that ain’t going to happen!
He also was asked afterwards whether there was anything Canada can do to stop the tarriffs and he said no. We should not believe this man for a second.
Asking the US to do anything for us doesn’t sound like a good plan, they’re no longer reliable.
Hopefully the extra enforcement around ‘fentanyl crossing south’ in practice is used to prevent unwanted incursions in both directions, namely guns north.
they’re no longer reliable.
I hate to say it but any term limited democracy is unreliable
Well, then, there’s a possibility America will become reliable once Trump abolishes term limits. /s
Lol what no.
It’s time Canada stopped relying on the United States for anything. If we want to be our own country, not beholden to any other country then we have to be prepared to stand on our own two feet. That means we have to stop thinking we can help every other country in the world and start thinking about how we secure Canada. And it’s going to cost because we need a functional military including the ships that will be required to patrol our coast lines. And that does not come cheap.
We still depend on other countries for trade, however I do agree that we need to start doing more within our country to facilitate trade of finished products rather than parts of products.
I agree 100%. Well said
If things keep going as they are we might want that border security to keep people out of Canada.
/s
You only need /s when it is not true
‘/s’ but not really.
Fuck em’. Lets join the EU and make some new friends. Or team up with mexico! Best way to play this game is to not play at all. Lets divest, pull the plug and re-orient with new partners.
I believe we need to finalize the CANZUK agreement, not join the EU.
This was never about the border or drugs
You got that right. That stuff was pretty much all post-hoc improvising to attempt to make trump’s ridiculous tariff idea seem less irrational and stupid.
I’m waiting to see what nebulous and impossible task he comes up with this time in the 11th hour, one last chance for Canada to prove its worth to the imitation mob boss who’s running the country down there.
I agree though, whatever he wants this time, we should call his bluff. As much as he wants to paint Canada as the abuser stealing billions from the american economy, everyone can see that the opposite is true. Deleting our trade deal with them will be hard at first, but it will ultimately be a good thing for Canadians.
They’re going to negotiate again, he said this last time too. That’s the game. Threaten, try to get something, repeat.
He’s just a bully, and we should take our oil and energy and go play elsewhere.
What does he want to get?
Attention and Praise
This was never about the border or drugs but Trump said jump and Canada asked How high?
This, sadly. I do not think a single thing Canada will do will have Trump change his tune. He has been told Canada has been screwing the US for whatever reason, and now he wants revenge like all the other actions he has taken this term so far. Still, I think we need to at least try, that way the more sane Americans (and the rest of the world) will hopefully realize that attempts were made by Canada, programs were put into place at the US’s request, and all ignored by Trump.
He believes there is a deficit because on the books the US is paying more to Canada than Canada is paying the US. He believes it should be the other way around, he is just forgetting that Canada sends more product down to the US so they pay Canada more.
This more product is oil and natural gas May I remind you that we sell it to the US at a discount.
It’s like he’s forgotten that trade consists of both money AND goods. We’re not just passing money back and forth while secretly keeping some of the USA’s cut. Like even kids can understand this. And yes it’s even more infuriating since we’ve been good to the USA, I’m sure many countries around the world would love a neighbour like Canada.
Especially seeing as how we sell LNG at a discount to the US.
Sometime needs to deal with those 40 lbs of fentanyl.
I doubt we will and I suspect it was a symbolic gesture from us to begin with.
Does anyone know if any money was actually spent?
It looks like Canada bought a lot of DJI “drones” but USA refused to have them close to their border because it’s a chinese spy tool…
