What If It Is A Deliberate Strategy To Step Into A New Position?

Jasmin Laine, a Canadian commentator, has a theory on Mark Carney that fits some of my own impressions of the guy, notably, that he doesn't have the charisma you'd expect from a national politician. Here's what she thinks is going on (at 6:05):

This sudden frantic push for an associate [EU] membership, which has not been debated in the House of Commons, it's just happened to us, 'cuz that's how democracy works, I guess, it has absolutely nothing to do with defense, security, or trade. So, what on earth does it actually have to do with? It makes no sense, right? Well, there are some numbers here that align in a way that are a little too close for my liking.

Ursula von der Leyen, her final term as the head of the European Commission wraps up in late 2029. The next Canadian federal election, where Mark Carney will be running again, is tentatively scheduled to take place on or before October 15, 2029, which means that unless Mark Carney decides to run again, which I highly doubt, him and Ursula are both scheduled to exit their executive offices within a few months of each other.

Under the old rules of EU and Parliament and how things work there, you cannot be appointed to be head of the commission unless you are a citizen of an EU member state, which is something that Mark Carney currently is not. If we take his word for it, he claims that he [renounced] his Irish ciizenship, and because he got that citizenship through descent, not because he was actually living there, . . . it would be a minimum three-year procerss for him [to regain it].

. . . So, what does that mean? Well, if you cannot run in Brussels unless you are a citizen of an EU member state, which you used to be, until you wanted to be the Prime Minister of Canada, . . . and now you're in a tricky situation where you don't meet that one really important requirement. So then, naybe you and your friend Ursula come together very secretly to all of a sudden spring on us and other European member states a completely unnecessary and unprecedented legal category called associate membership, a blank canvas with no historical definition where you can build the exact legal loophole to transition an international technocrat into being Ursula von der Leyen's successor.

So let's look at how this works. Ursula von der Leyen is President of the European Commission, which is the executive branch and head of government for the European Union. The President of the EU serves five-year terms. The leaders of the 27 EU member states (collectively known as the European Council) meet to propose a candidate for the presidency. By treaty, they must take the results of the Parliament elections into account when choosing their nominee. (Doesn't this sound like the Holy Roman Empire?)

The nominated candidate must then be formally approved by the European Parliament. (Back in the day, the Holy Roman Emperor was crowned by the pope.) In modern times, the candidate needs to secure an absolute majority (50% plus one) of the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) via a secret ballot. So this sounds like a smoky backroom procedure, not much different from how Mark Carney got to be prime minister.

Justin Trudeau says he plans to resign, the Liberals go into the back room and announce that Carney, never elected for anything, is now their leader. The Liberals get a member of parliament who has a safe seat in Alberta to resign that seat so Carney can run for it. Carney calls a snap national election, and by dint of winning his Alberta seat gets to be prime minister when the Liberals win the election. The EU presidential election is only slightly less democratic. Jasmin Laine continues,

And if you really think about it, and you take a look at some of the places that Mark Carney has prioritized traveling, he's had a hyper-aggressive schedule of diplomatic travel across European capitals. And how he becomes Ursula's successor is that he gets appointed [strictly speaking, nominated by the prince-electors of the EU], and then it has to be voted on [by the European Parliament].

So it almost appears as thpough he could, in theory, be engaging in a calculated backroom lobbying campaign targeting the exact heads of state who would vote on the appointment of the next European Commission President. . . . So, he is in theory doing all the groundwork stuff to buy the political goodwill of the EU's core voting factions.

But don't stop tnere. Carney has met with King Chalres fully three times since becoming prime minister, most recently on March 16. Think about that. King Charles, at least for now, has nothing to do with the EU, but recall that Labour is mooting the idea of rejoining the EU without a referendum.

So I kinda go along with Ms Laine, except that Carney doesn't really want to be president of the European Commission, he wants to be the Holy Roman Emperor, except the EU is much bigger than the Holy Roman Empire ever was.

The other necessry thing would be for Canada to agree to become an associate EU member. Under the parliamentary system, all tnis could probably be done with a simple majority in the House of Commons, although depending on what associate memberhip involved, individual provinces could object. What else stands in Carney's way? Superman, Donald Trump, the man with the cape. I'll have thoughts on that.

Eby Loses Snap Election In British Columbia

Ten days ago, I brought up David Eby (pronounced E-B), Premier of British Columbia, who as the commentator in the YouTube embedded above puts it, decided to "copy Mark Carney's homework" and call a snap election in which he ran against Donald Trump. The result from yesterday's votimg was counterintuitive, at least if you think like Mark Carney:

David Eby’s snap election gamble has handed the B.C. Conservative Party a majority government, CTV News declared first Saturday night. /p>

Interim leader Lorne Doerkson’s party was leading or elected in 62 of the province’s 93 ridings when he gave his victory speech to a roaring crowd. /p>

“We are going to super-charge British Columbia,” he said. /p>

Doerkson will lead B.C.’s first Conservative government in nearly 100 years—while Eby announced he would step down as B.C. NDP leader.

Even in the short leadup to the election, the signs of its outcome were visible: Political pundits

are beginning to wonder if British Columbia Premier David Eby’s decision to call an election, to be held on Oct. 24, will rank among the greatest blunders in Canadian political history. That will depend, of course, on what British Columbians decide.

The idea that this may have been one of "the greatest blunders in Canadian political history" is commonplace, but nobody seems to be specifying just what the blunder precisely was. Some point to his clumsy handling of how his kids went to a subsidized $10-a-day daycare not available to most British Columbians, but even an average candidate could probably sweep that aside.

Something more basic was wrong, which so far, even conservative Canadian commentators are missing. Let's look at a recent question posed to Mark Carney, when he was in Turkey of all places:

At 23:50, a reporter asks,

I want to ask you about the repeated allegations from the United States that we are interfering in their elections. This is a serious accusation, and it's not a one-off. We had the fact sheet, we had the envoy, we have Navarro, and there's a risk that this normalizes, that this is a valid concern. I'd like you to address whether there is an ounce of merit to their claims, and if there isn't are you willing to call this ojt as gaslighting or scapegoating? . . . One thing we've seen over the past year is that you can see a narrative starting, and then it has consequences later. Should Canadians be concerned that [if] there's adverse results for the Republicans in the midterms, that somehow we're going to be blamed, and I don't know, tariffed -- like do you think this has serious potential to become a -- justification for more tariffs?

The question itself is the answer. The subtext is the elephant in the room: the reporter is basically asking, "Hey, Mr Prime Minister, you've been tugging on Superman's cape. Do you really tnink this is a good idea?" I tnink this is the one thing behind a lot of Canadian thinking that even conservative Canadians are hesitant to express: if you get the US pissed off, there are consequences, which we're already seeing. Canada lost over 100,000 jobs in August and September, while Ottawa is still out to lunch over the high-profile Stelco layoffs.

Let's localize this to British Columbia. Lumber, much of which is exported to the US, is a major industry there:

More than 20 lumber mills closed across B.C. over the last three years. Billions in wood products affected by U.S. tariffs. Tens of thousands of jobs lost in Canada.

The state of B.C.'s forestry industry is, by most accounts, dire.

While there are many factors driving the decline, recent U.S. tariffs haven't helped.

But Donald Trump is hardly the first U.S. president whose government has imposed steep duties on Canadian lumber. The tariffs are the latest chapter in a dispute that's been going on for more than four decades.

When David Eby tried to call a snap election and make it a referendum on Trump, it blew up in his face. I get the impression that Canadians generally are nervous when politicians, especially Carney, tickle the dragon's tail. Canadians are excessively deferential and polite (except to Americans), and they seem to be uncomfortable about bringing this up, but they're clearly getting nervous, and it looks like tney'll vote nervous when they get a chance.

Add to that the visuals. Eby on TV is a little too gangly. Carney is even worse. His head is a little too big for his body, and he's homorless. The closest he came to a smile in the interview above was the occasional smirk. There's zero charisma. The only thing he has going for him is that the opposition is, if anything, even less charismatic. Poor Canada.

The Ilhan Omar Fraud Goes Deeper And Deeper

Thursday's post focused on just one of Ilhan Omar's potential problems, that she married her brother. The whole story here goes something like this:

The allegation that’s gotten the most attention is that Ilhan Omar married her brother.

The underlying suggestion is that Ilhan’s family split up in the 1990s as it sought refuge from war-torn Somalia. Allegedly, the future congresswoman, her father and one of her sisters used the false name Omar to come to the United States as part of another Somali family getting asylum, while her siblings -under the family’s original name - got asylum in the U.K.

Then, Omar supposedly got her brother into the States, too, via a sham marriage.

If nothing else, she’s had a very odd marital life; she’s almost the Zsa Zsa Gabor of Somali-Americans. Omar was in an Islamic marriage with one man (named Ahmed Hirsi), then married the man believed to be her brother (Ahmed Said Elmi), then divorced Elmi and officially married Hirsi - before divorcing Hirsi and marrying a political consultant who is now her husband.

In her memoir, she says nothing of substance about Elmi. She doesn’t use his name and claims she spent very little time with him. She also doesn’t name any of her siblings. She gives the impression of wanting to provide as little information about her background as possible, and stick to the more important work of maligning her adopted country.

But then we've got another problem right there, that "her father and one of her sisters used the false name Omar to come to the United States". Via Fox News:

Ilhan Omar is not the "real name" of the Minnesota congresswoman, Fox News Digital has learned.

Her real name is Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, according to two people familiar with the ongoing investigation into the Somali-born congresswoman, including a law enforcement source.

And if proven in court that Omar has lived her "entire life under an alias," a former Minnesota federal immigration judge tells Fox News Digital that every single form she ever filled out could be "called into question."

. . . Fox News Digital has now learned from multiple sources familiar with the investigation that Omar is not the congresswoman’s birth name.

Omar has publicly confirmed that she does not have a birth certificate.

In an official U.S. House biography, her birthday is listed as Oct. 14, 1982, and states that she was born in Mogadishu, Somalia. She says she came to the U.S. with her family as refugees fleeing war-torn Somalia in 1995, when she was a minor.

But this links to the problem of her age: the assumptioln is that if she was born in 1982, she would have been 17 in 2000, and she woluld have been naturalized via her father, when he naturalized. But if she was actually born a year earlier, she would not have been a minor and naturalized via her father, except that it's also alleged that her father used a false name to come to the US. So even if she was in fact 17 and a minor when her father was naturalized, her father is now alleged to have committed immigration fraud himself:

Rep. Ilhan Omar’s late father, Nur Omar Mohamed, wasn’t who he purported to be, a source told The Post.

The Minnesota congresswoman — whose home was raided by the feds on Monday as part of an ongoing criminal fraud investigation — has long described her father as an “educator” who fled his country’s devastating civil war alongside millions of others and arrived in America with his family as a refugee in 1995.

But, an expert scholar exclusively told The Post that Nur “misrepresented himself as a refugee” to US authorities when he was really a prominent military commander in the Somalia dictatorship that killed as many as 200,000 people.

“He was a full colonel in Siad Barre’s military regime,” historian and Oxford University doctoral researcher Mohamed Haji Ingiriis told The Post. “Ilhan’s father was never an educator.

He added, “Nur Said was a military officer who was loyal to the regime until the end. He was part and parcel of those who caused and created the mayhem they ‘fled’ to live comfortably in the United States.”

. . . US immigration law strictly forbids granting refugee status to “any person who ordered, incited, assisted or otherwise participated in the persecution of any person on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

According to the Fox News link above, the federal investigation into Omar's immiogration fraud isn't yet complete:

On Wednesday, U.S. District Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro filed a motion seeking to prevent the federal search warrant for the congresswoman’s home from being unsealed, which was requested by several media outlets. The motion says the federal government is not yet finished executing the search warrant, and that it shouldn’t be unsealed yet.

"Before the Court are three Applications to unseal ex parte materials and proceedings related to a federal search warrant for the personal residence in the District of Columbia of Congresswoman Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar…" the motion begins.

"That's not her real name," one source said when asked why the motion used the "a/k/a Ilhan Adbullahi Omar" language.

So it sounds like we don't know the whole story, but what's beginning to emerge is it doesn't matter if she married her brother, it doesn't matter if she's used an alias, it doesn't matter if she was or wasn't a minor, if her father came to the US via fraud, that still makes her naturalization fraudulent. And that leaves aside her financial statments with her third husband, a con artist.

So far, there's no evidence that she's hired an attorney and no evidence that she's keeping her mouth shut.

Kamala Resurfaces

Kamala Harris just spoke in Las Vegas and it seems she's testing out a new oratory style. It's worse than you can imagine. https://t.co/wzglFWAUBJ

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) October 21, 2026

Almost two years ago, in thr wake of the Trump 47 inauguration, I posted on rumors that Kamala Harris's marriage to Doug Emhoff was on the rocks. For whatever reason, it's held together, even though on one hand, she was reported as blaming her loss on her "dead weight" husband, while Emhoff himself claimed he'd put his legal career on hold to support her campaign and come across as a "wife guy".

Still, right now, as Kamala makes campaign-like noises, it looks like Dougie isn't on board:

While former Vice President Kamala Harris may be laying the groundwork for another presidential campaign, her husband is having private reservations amid warnings from Democratic donors that a 2028 White House bid by Harris would face significant obstacles, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

Harris' husband, Doug Emhoff, has privately told some associates he would prefer she not seek the presidency again, while several donors have directly cautioned Harris that another campaign would be a long shot, according to people familiar with the conversations.

Despite those concerns, Harris has been meeting with major donors, expanding her political staff, and traveling to battleground states to campaign for Democratic candidates ahead of November's midterm elections.

. . . Meanwhile, Emhoff's reported reluctance underscores the personal toll another national campaign could carry.

In her memoir, "107 Days," Harris described the strain the 2024 election placed on their marriage, recalling Emhoff telling her during a difficult moment, "We can't turn on each other."

People close to Emhoff nevertheless expect him to support Harris should she ultimately decide to run, according to the Journal.

But a little over a week ago, Politico claimed, ‘She totally blew it’: How Kamala Harris wasted a year to make her case:

Kamala Harris has kept the door open to running for president again in 2028. What she failed to do over the past year, even onetime supporters and allies of the former vice president say, is give voters a reason to reconsider her if she does.

For Harris, according to interviews with nearly 20 Democratic Party donors and strategists in California and across the country, it was a missed opportunity to redefine herself — and ultimately a wasted year.

Kamala Harris has kept the door open to running for president again in 2028. What she failed to do over the past year, even onetime supporters and allies of the former vice president say, is give voters a reason to reconsider her if she does.

For Harris, according to interviews with nearly 20 Democratic Party donors and strategists in California and across the country, it was a missed opportunity to redefine herself — and ultimately a wasted year.

“She totally blew it,” said Doug Herman, who was a lead mail strategist for Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns. “She hasn’t gotten into the mix.”

Harris has offered voters almost nothing in the way of specifics about how she would remake a Democratic Party hungry for change after another term of Donald Trump. She hasn’t spoken to how she would expand her own appeal to the voters who rejected her, and she remains as reticent of media as ever, continuing to favor appearances before friendly audiences and at times drawing fire for limiting access to news organizations altogether. She has entirely sidestepped the ideological civil war consuming the Democrats and has acted more like a party elder at a time when voters and donors are demanding a break with the past.

Rgegarding her latest appearance, Amy Curtis comments at Townhall:

Kamala had to rebrand herself multiple times in the past, and this is just another reboot for a candidate no one wants. There's a reason she dropped out before Iowa in 2020 and why voters rejected her in 2024.

Emhoff has tied his legal csreer, or at least the second phase of it, to being married to Kamala. Presumably that will still count for something, however heavily discounted, whether or not she runs in 2028. He's got to stay married to her no matter what.

Ilhan Omar Is Apparently In Hot Water

In the YouTube excerpt from a News Nation interview embedded above, Alan Dershowitz advises Ilhan Omar,

I would tell her to call me, or a good lawyer, and be quiet, and allow a lawyer to handle the case. She's in deep trouble. I've had a lot of experience with search warrants done against government officials. And before a judge, particularly a DC judge, signs off on a search warrant in Washington, DC, at the home of a member of congress, there has to be something very, very substantial in the affadavit. This is not the case of a judge just signing. I suspect it's a lot more than we know.

So what did she do? Instead of taking Dershowitz's advice, or the advice of almost any lawyer, she did an interview with MS NOW:

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on Wednesday called allegations that she married her brother “insane” – but didn’t entirely close the door to the possibility of being related to her ex-husband.

“Not to my knowledge,” Omar responded, when asked by MS NOW’s Chris Hayes if there was any “weird kernel of truth” to the claim that she wed her brother.

The decade-old allegations that Omar and her ex, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, got hitched in a failed effort to get him a green card originated on a “Somali blog,” and spread when “right-wing conspiracy theorists” latched onto it, Omar explained in her first interview since federal agents raided her Washington, DC, home last week.

Trump was on it right away:

President Trump on Wednesday said Ilhan Omar’s near-admission that she married her brother, suggesting she didn’t have knowledge of any blood relation, was “not a good answer.”

. . . This comes as the criminal fraud investigation is believed to be using Omar’s DNA to prove she married her own brother and committed immigration fraud.

Regular true crime fans know the one thing that keeps perps from staying silent and letting their attorneys handle their case is their vanity -- they somehow believe they can convince intestigators, a jury, or the public at large that they're innocent, when tbey're only digging themselves a deeper hole. Dershowitz echoes another observer who suspects she's actually in very hot water:

Tim Burchett just SHOCKED our audience and thinks the Ilhan Omar investigation is MUCH DARKER than we realize: There’s a reason Obama came in, it's because she’s going to be deported. Burchett suggests there is far more happening behind the scenes than the public knows. Obama is a the Democrats' "first string" player. That's how you know this is serious. It can't just be immigration fraud. Now they're panicking and doing everything they can before she is deported. She needs to go, @timburchett

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 20, 2026

Miranda Devine thinks it's the DNA:

Ahem. Five years ago I wrote a column about DNA test results that showed there was a 99.999998 percent chance that Ilhan Omar and her second husband Ahmed Elmi were siblings. A few hours before we went to press my informant was arrested by Biden's FBI. Funny that. https://t.co/MEBWf5U7pv

— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) October 20, 2026

Although DNA is just one line of inquiry, here's more detail from the New York Post:

Federal prosecutors are planning to use DNA evidence to try to prove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) committed immigration fraud, as part of the sprawling investigation into the congresswoman, sources told The Post.

People familiar with the years-long criminal probe said the feds have made use of whistleblowers, government records and now obtained DNA in an effort to substantiate decade-old allegations that Omar — and possibly members of her family like her father — defrauded immigration authorities.

One source said the DNA evidence was critical to proving an allegation that Omar married her brother when she wed Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009 because she was trying to help him get a green card — which never came to fruition.

It’s unclear whether the DNA was taken before or after Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) searched the congresswoman’s home in Washington, DC, last Monday, when federal agents were seen exiting the bungalow with boxes marked “Seized Property Evidence.”

Another source pushed back on initial reports that investigators had gone “dumpster diving” in order to get DNA swabs of Omar, Elmi, who is currently residing in the UK, or family members.

Two more indicated that the execution of the search warrant on Oct. 12, coupled with the DNA and additional evidence, has provided a solid basis to bring charges of conspiracy to commit some form of immigration fraud before a grand jury, stemming from the probe initiated by the Minnesota US Attorney’s Office.

Given the case is being pursued as a general conspiracy, the evidence will prove useful even if some of the acts fall outside of the statute of limitations.

“If you argue a conspiracy, you can allege overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy that are outside the statute of limitations,” said Neama Rahmini, a former federal prosecutor.

This also omits questions about her financial disclosures and her potential involvement in her current husband's separate investment frauds. But so far, all anyone can reasonably surmise is that she's likely in a great deal of trouble.

US Public Opinion Grows More Unfavorable To Canada

The video embedded above paints a broad-brush picture of growing negstive views about Canada in the US, but this isn't the only case. According to Gallup from last March, before the latest tariff dispute:

Most Americans continue to hold positive opinions of Canada (80%) and Great Britain (76%), but views of both nations have dropped significantly in the past year and now are the lowest Gallup has measured for each. Since last year, positive ratings of Canada have fallen nine percentage points, while there has been an eight-point drop for Great Britain. Before this year, Canada and Great Britain averaged 91% and 88% favorable ratings, respectively.

According to a YouGov poll released on September 1, after the tariff dispute:

In recent years, a growing minority of Americans have come to view Canada as unfriendly to the U.S.: 39% of Americans currently describe Canada as an ally and another 25% as friendly, while 19% now call it unfriendly and 3% an enemy. The 22% of Americans who now view Canada as unfriendly or an enemy marks a new high since 2016.

In spite of this, the YouGov poll claims Americans don't support Trump in the trade war:

President Donald Trump recently imposed a 50% tariff on many Canadian goods, a move most Americans are strongly or somewhat opposed to, the latest Economist/YouGov Poll finds. 58% of Americans are opposed to raising tariffs on goods imported from Canada, while only 26% support doing so.

I think it's more correct to say Americans don't think much about Canada one way or the other, unless developments force them to have an opinion. Another issue is Mark Carney's public persona. At minimum, he's uncharismatic and humorless. It doesn't help that his semi-official height, based on his Harvard hockey team stats, is 5'9", but I have a feeling this is an exaggeration. He's also somewhat baby-faced. In fact, I think Carney is a punk.

Let's go into the connotations of this term. According to Dictionary.com, a punk is in slang:

• something or someone worthless or unimportant.
• a young ruffian; hoodlum.
• an inexperienced youth.
• a young male partner of a gay man.
• an apprentice, especially in the building trades.
• Prison Slang. a passive or submissive male inmate, especially one who is used for sex by another male inmate.

I asked Chrome AI mode, "Is Mark Carney a punk?" It dodged the question:

While Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is not a punk rocker by trade or lifestyle, he is a well-documented fan of punk rock music. His affinity for the genre became a public talking point during an interview with the iconic music journalist Nardwuar the Human Serviette at a Vancouver record shop.

Regarding Nardwuar the Human Serviette, his Wikipedia entry is here. I guess if you like poutine, you might also favor Nardwuar the Human Serviette, but I can also say with some confidence that Nardwuar fits several of the definitions of punk listed above, but like many Canadian things, he simply mimics an American model, Pee Wee Herman. But I also asked Chrome AI mode, "What does someone mean when he taunts, 'You're a punk?'" It replied, "When someone taunts you by calling you a punk, they are using a multi-layered insult designed to diminish your status, courage, or toughness. Depending on the context, the taunt usually carries one of three primary meanings:"

1. You are weak or cowardly: In confrontational settings, calling someone a punk implies they lack courage, won't stand up for themselves, or are easily intimidated. It is an attempt to label you as soft or fearful.
2. You are insignificant or subordinate: Historically and in street slang, the term implies someone of lower status who is forced to submit to others. By calling you a punk, the speaker is trying to assert dominance and position you as beneath them.
3. You are inexperienced or a novice: The term can also mean a young, foolish, or worthless person who hasn't earned respect yet.

It occurs to me that in all but so many words, Trump has been calling Carney a punk. I love it. I have a feeling that Americans who've been paying attention love it, too.

Alberta Votes Not To Proceed With Independence

The headline at Conservative Treehouse is The USA Dodges a Bullet – Alberta Independence Referendum Fails by 3:1 Ratio. I certainly agree that we dodged a bullet, but maybe not for the reasons Sundance thinks. He says,

While we have sincere respect for those who sought to get free of the Canadian madness, it is ultimately a good outcome for the USA. A successful exit would have likely begun a process to merge with the USA as a 51st state. Obviously adding another million+ progressive voices to the USA landscape would have been detrimental.

Actually, a successful vote for secession in the referendum would have been only a vote to put an actual referendum for secession on another ballot. There would have been no direct move toward secession as any outcome of yesterday's election. According to Radio CJME:

EVAN BRAY: If majority vote is to begin the legal process to hold a binding referendum on separation, what needs to happen?

DWIGHT NEWMAN: That would lead towards holding a referendum question on whether to separate. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has spoken of her intent to organize that quickly.

Part of what led to having to have this referendum about a referendum was a court decision from the trial court level saying that there would need to be consultation with Indigenous peoples in Alberta before they held the vote, and that is under appeal.

I don’t know whether Alberta would try to get to an appeal result on that first, or would try to engage in that consultation first. But that would be one element that is part of what they’re calling the legal process.

They’d also be trying to develop questions or a question that fit with the requirements of the federal Clarity Act. If they’re really looking to hold a secession vote, they want to have it recognized by Ottawa.

As I've discussed here, the Clarity Act makes Ottawa the authority on whether any secession referendum is valid and the outcome sufficiently large, so no matter how a province votes, Ottawa can overrule the vote, and even if the vote is ruled valid, that only begins a process of negotiation with the other provinces and the indigenous people. Good luck. This whole thing has been kabuki theatre. If the referendum had passed, it would still be just more kabuki theatre.

But also, although Sundance is concerned at the possibility of a million progressive voters coming into the US, Alberta is actually thought to be the most conservative Canadian province. But I don't think liberal vs conservative maps the same way in Canada vs the US. Recent events have reminded me that in my much younger days, I got to know some Canadians, including a lady friend, her family, and my graduate school dissertation director, very well.

The funny part was that they all lived in the US, clearly enjoyed the higher living standard here, but had no intention of becoming citizens. They were Canadians through and through, utterly convinced of the superiority of Canada. If you ever had the temerity to ask them why they'd been living happy as bugs south of the border lo these many years, you risked a nuclear confrontation. So, even for Albertans, the solution Sundance proposes of simply emigrating is the thing which is not.

Last weekend's explosion, or explosions, or no explosions, and fire (anything could have caused it) at an Alberta military base reminded m again of what I may have forgotten about the Canadians I knew when I was young and foolish: they believe everything the government tells them. Mutatis mutandis, the events at the Alberta base correspond as a national tragedy for Canada to the January 29, 2025 collision of a helicopter with a regional jet at Reagan Airport in Washington for the US.

Let's recall that after the Washington crash, according to Chrome AI mode, "As investigations by the NTSB and the U.S. Army unfolded, public and government outrage shifted from shock to anger over preventable, systemic failures". There was a major, unspoken DEI subtext when it was revealed that the helicopter pilot was a lesbian with connections to the Biden White House who happened to be flying outside the designated route.

In contrast the Canadian reaction to the military base event has quickly settled into the government-approved CBC paradigm:

A dangerous combination of weather conditions was at play Saturday afternoon when a deadly fire engulfed a training exercise at CFB Wainwright in east-central Alberta, killing four soldiers and severely injuring dozens more, weather and wildfire experts say.

. . . "Conditions were extreme," said Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildland fires at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C., who runs the Canada fire weather outlook. "Things were dry. Any fires that started would have spread rapidly and would be intense and that's pretty well what happened."

. . . Flannigan said NASA satellite data indicate a fire was burning near the base by around 2 p.m. The Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index shows that fire conditions across the Canadian prairies, including southern and central Alberta, ranged from very high to extreme.

. . . Canadian Armed Forces Maj.-Gen. Wade Rutland, inaugural commander of the revitalized 1st Canadian Division, told reporters Sunday that the fire began as a grassfire and spread rapidly around 4 p.m. as the wind direction changed.

Rutland said range control at the base were aware about a fire for several hours but decided training could carry on "for a certain amount of time."

. . . However, meteorological and wildfire experts say the combination of dry fuels, low humidity and strong winds created conditions favourable to rapid fire spread. Heavy wind gusts of over 80 km/h had also been forecast for the area later that day.

In other words, there's plenty of room for questioning, at minimum, why range control allowed the training to continue in light of the forecast, but this also ignores the problem that nobody knows just what caused the fire. Was it the fires that were already burning and the wind suddenly shifted, or was it something else? What's odd is that there are plenty of conservative Canadian YouTubers, but so far, none of them has seen anything hinky here, when US commentators would be indignant that so many obvious quesions are going unanswered.

The CBC put a couple of retired Canadian generals on as talking heads, and they spoke reassuringly. We don't know what happened, but surely it will be investigated. This will take months. We need to be patient. This is a completely different set of national attitudes, and these people are astonishingly complacent. Do we want, not just a million or so, but all 41 million of them, coming in? We need to think this through.

The problem is that the current trade war is exposing a basic Canadian problem: without the previous favorable tariff treatment Canada had, its economy isn't viable. Justin Trudeau is said to have acknowledged this, and Mark Carney must certainly be aware of it, too -- as, of course, is Trump. Trump has recently reiterated what he's said all along, that Canada basically has no choice but to become the 51st state, although it would likely have to transition as a territory for some period first. But this is not bombast and bravado, it's reality.

That's an economic reality, as well as a geopolitical one. We've got to hope Washingon is seriously gaming this out -- on the other hand, we certainly don't want the 41 million Canadians that are currently there coming in to vote, I guarantee it. Sundance is right, we dodged a bullet with Alberta, but there's a much bigger one still in the works. It's worth remembering that the last two major territorial expansions for the US came from wars, with Mexico and Spain. It might well take a war with Canada to re-form the attitudes north of the border enough to make Canada part of the US, but there would probably be little choice.