The View From Canada

Canadians tend to view US politics with a mixture of disdain and apprehension. Disdain because most of us think our system is better and apprehension because what happens in the US can have a big affect on Canada. Right now, we seem to be in the sights of an unhinged leader with no grasp of economics and no respect for international agreements. It's causing quite a stir up here in the Great White North. 

So this post is a grab bag of some recent Canadian political commentary with some cultural asides.

First, here's Andrew Coyne from an opinion piece in The Globe and Mail (gift link).

The United States that openly threatens to invade Panama or Denmark – or to annex Canada – has not just stepped outside international law, including the basic Westphalian proscription of attempts to alter borders by force. Neither does a country that launches trade wars on a different country every day, including countries with which it has longstanding free trade treaties, reveal a simple lack of commitment to a rules-based approach to international trade. It is engaged in an all-out assault on both. It has become an outlaw state.

And in this regard, too, it is aligning itself with the dictatorships. That is what dictatorships do. It is intrinsic to their nature. Just as they refuse to be bound by law internally – we are counting down the days to when the Trump administration defies its first court order – so they recognize no law in their dealings with other states. (Or rules of any kind: you’ll have noticed they also cheat at sports. As does Mr. Trump.)

It is not just that the democratic world can no longer count on America. It is that America, under Mr. Trump, is no longer necessarily part of the democratic world: neither fully democratic in its own affairs, nor committed to the welfare of other democracies, but hostile to both. If the international order is to be preserved, then, it will have to be preserved, in part, from the United States. Certainly it will have to be rebuilt without it.

 

This article from Emmett Macfarlane looks at Canadian federalism and how it's being affected by Trumps antics and the spillover of the MAGA movement into Canada.

Instead, the problems created by federalism are political in nature, and it does not help that our country suffers from a juvenile culture of intergovernmental relations. In short, and to be blunt, our provinces tend to be run by mewling teenagers, who bitterly complain about the exercise of the federal spending power all while routinely demanding more money from the federal government and engaging in buck passing - constantly attempting to shift blame to the feds for problems within their own jurisdiction.

Worse still, the intersection of partisanship/ideology and federalism is a serious detriment in the context of US economic attacks and Trump’s rhetorical assaults on Canadian sovereignty. In short, while none of the premiers like what Trump is doing, some of them have ideological sympathies with Trump and seem entirely ill-equipped to dealing with him.

The recent misadventure of Canada’s 13 premiers visiting the United States to ‘negotiate’ with the White House is illustrative. The trip was a farce; some of the premiers appeared to genuinely believe that Trump, a total chaos agent, is someone who could be negotiated with. They ended up not meeting with either the President or any senior official but with staffers who promised to pass on the message and then snidely tweeted about Canada becoming a 51st state. And it appears the premiers have foolishly been paying a Trump-connected lobbying firm at its rate of $85,000/month for the privilege.

How Canadians feel about Trump's 51st state idea

From author and NDP Member of Parliament, we have this. 

In Canada, some leaders – the Prime Minister, Premier Furey, and Premier Eby – have been blunt regarding just how deadly and serious the Trump threat is. But despite these unprecedented statements, the political realm keeps dialing itself back to a false normal.

To be fair, there isn't a single political strategist or Comms person with any experience charting our way through these times. Canada hasn't faced a threat this serious since the 1930s. It’s okay to admit that none of us really know what to do now.

But rather than thinking outside the box, political strategists are sticking with the tried and true as if this will get us back to the world that existed before November 5, 2024.

I'm sorry, but the same old won't cut it. 

On Wednesday, the CBC Radio One program, The Current, had a segment about how Trump has changed the Canadian electoral landscape. For those who may not be keeping up with Canadian politics, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced his forthcoming resignation, which will likely lead to a federal election after the Liberals choose a new leader in March. Ontario is in the middle of a provincial election campaign with an election coming on Monday with Premier Doug Ford spending a lot of time lobbying US politicians to fight Trump's proposed tariffs. 

You can listen to The Current's segment here or read the show's transcript here. This part is from a discussion about Mark Carney, who may be be our next prime minister. (If only the US had a president with as much economic experience, sigh). 

MG: Susan, Mark Carney won't say what he'll do in response to the Trump's, the tariffs that Donald Trump is proposing. He has not been elected. He has not led a party. Why is it a good idea for Canadians to gamble on him and for the party to gamble on him with all of those big question marks?

SUSAN SMITH: Well, he's not an unknown quantity. I think the rest of the sentence when he was speaking to Rosie was that I haven't been elected the leader yet, so not my place to insert myself in the negotiations. Look, I think when you elect a leader, he will be speaking about the policies. He's addressed some of the dollar for dollar tariffs that he would take on. But what he has said he is is he is an experienced negotiator. He worked at the Bank of Canada under Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty, and he helped us navigate the economic crisis in 2008 as the governor of the Bank of Canada. Then England, Brexit, managing that. Then the private sector. Pierre Poilievre was elected as an MP when he was 26 years old. He hasn't worked in the real world in financial markets, dealing with the kinds of things and the kinds of global leaders and businesspeople that Canada's going to have to deal with. What we need in this turbulent time with Trump is a steady hand, a calm, a calm manager.

Finally, the idea of Canada becoming the 51st US state has united Canada in a way we haven't seen since at least the Vancouver Olympics. Here are a couple of songs that I've seen recently.

  

And here's another for you.

The Republicans and Trump Are in Power Because of Unequal Representation

This  is a guest post by Kevin Davies, a writer (prose & songs [300+]), artist, graphic designer, game creator and  publisher. 

The USA has a population of 333,287,557 in 2022. If the USA is divided in half along the 98th meridian of longitude, we find that 80% of Americans (around 250 million) live in the EASTERN HALF of the USA — especially in the coastal and great lakes cities. Around 64.4% of the U.S. population lives east of the Mississippi River. [1]

The WESTERN HALF of the USA hosts 24% of its population (around 79 million people, 2022). If the west coast, including California and Washington state (around 53 million people) were removed from the western half, the rest of the west (the plains and desert east of the Rockies to the 98th meridian), around 33% of the American landmass, is inhabited by only around 9% of the USA’s population (around 27 million people). 

For reference the New York City metropolitan area contained 23.6 million residents as of 2020.

This relatively lower population in the rural west is due in part to the arid climate caused by the lack of rainfall resulting from the position of the Rocky Mountains and the Cascade Range further west. [1]

So, under the principle of one-person-one vote and equality of representation in a democracy, this would suggest that the electors in the eastern half of the USA should have 80% of the total representation in the US government, with the west, minus California and Washington state, having just 9%. Yet that is not the case. 

The USA’s Founding Fathers were not actually believers in democracy and set up the election and governance system to ensure that rural land owners maintained a greater share of power than their numbers would actually provide them in a real democracy. 

This ploy has resulted in a very unjust imbalance of influence between urban and rural electors that today, as ever more people are moving from rural to urban areas with increasing population density, that it’s reached the point where the urban population is vastly under represented in government and national policies. 

Elector inequality (i.e., not having the same number of people per electoral district), skews government representation and policy significantly toward rural interests over urban ones. 

How many Americans realize this or comprehend its significance? 

THE INEQUALITY OF THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE IN THE USA

“[E]ach state is guaranteed a minimum of three electors, regardless of population size. It also means that there is always a total of 538 electors, or equivalently, 538 electoral votes — that’s the sum of 435 voting members of the House, 100 senators, and three electors assigned to Washington, DC.”

“According to 2023 population estimates, one electoral vote in Wyoming accounts for around 194,000 people, while a vote in Texas, Florida or California accounts for over 700,000. For context, if all 538 electoral votes were distributed evenly among the US population, each vote would represent about 623,000 people.” [2]

“Wyoming makes up about 0.18% of the US population but controls 0.56% of all electoral votes. This difference may seem minuscule, but it translates to approximately two additional electoral votes for Wyoming, relative to its population share.”[2]

“California represents 11.6% of the US population and has 10% of all electoral votes. This means California controls roughly nine fewer votes in the Electoral College than it would if votes were allocated based on population alone (because 11.6% of the total 538 votes is about 63 electoral votes, but California currently controls 54).” [2]

THE INEQUALITY OF THE SENATE IN THE USA

“The distorted representation found in the Senate is, of course, due to the historic anachronism of having states be represented in the Senate instead of people. With Democrats more concentrated in larger states they are less represented. California gets just two senators despite having 68 times the population of Wyoming, which also gets two senators. Wyoming Republicans are much more represented in the US Senate than are California Democrats.” [3]

“The distortion of representation in the Senate goes beyond the partisan. A Black American is 16% less represented in the Senate than an American on average; A Latino American 33% less, an Asian American 29% less.” [3] More represented than the average are Rural (38%), Gun Owner (14%), White (13), as of 2023 to 2024. [3]

THE INEQUALITY OF CONGRESSIONAL SEATS IN THE USA

Based on the 2020 US Census Montana had a population of 542,704 per Congressional seat, Wyoming 577,719 per seat, California had 761,091 people per seat, New York 777,529 per seat, and Delaware 990,837 per seat; the US average was 761,169 per seat. [4] Again inequality equals an injustice. 

People who live in states where it takes fewer people to gain a representative’s seat have more influence with their vote.

WHAT WILL IT TAKE FOR ELECTORS TO RECOGNIZE INJUSTICE?

Will the pro-wealthy, ill-conceived, and apparently often illegal actions of the Trump administration push this injustice to the breaking point resulting in a constitutional crisis?

How much longer with the electors of the USA accept that the people who are repeatedly deciding their fate represent a significant minority who are only able to achieve power due to an unjust electoral and governance system?

If the USA had elections and governance based on the actual desires of the electorate based on one-person-one vote with all government electoral districts having the SAME number of people, it is likely that conservatives would never obtain national power. Ever. 

Plus, the wealthy would not be as represented as they have been and so would pay much more in taxes, making the USA a significantly more equitable country.

WHAT ABOUT CANADA?

Canada has a similar divide along the 98th meridian of longitude with its west coast having a higher population density west of the Rocky Mountains than within the plains or the north. 

Like the USA Canada unfortunately allows each rural and especially western and northern electoral ridings (districts) to be populated by fewer electors than urban ridings — thus ensuring that each vote by a person in a rural area has more influence and thus greater representation to determine the government and its policies relative to each urban vote. 

This ultimately gives the Conservatives a greater chance of being elected by their more rural supporters than they would have if the system were equitable. 

However, Canada’s rural-urban elector inequity is not as bad as that of the USA because Canada does not have the undemocratic Electoral College, Senate, and Congressional seat assignments as grossly unrepresentative as in the USA. The Gerrymandering of US district boundaries only makes the lack of true representation worse.  

In a modern age, from the view of people who support democracy and equity, there is no good reason for this injustice. Rural ridings can be made larger and/or urban ones smaller, so that every riding has the SAME NUMBER of ELECTORS +/– 100 people.

If Americans and Canadians want to ensure they reside in a real democracy, and that their representatives legitimately represent electors and the results of an election, it is essential that the practice of granting each rural vote more influence than an urban vote be ended. 

— Kevin Davies, February 18, 2025.

[1] VIDEO - Why 80% of Americans Live East of This Line

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwJABxjcvUc

[2] INFO - Representation in the Electoral College: How do states compare?

https://usafacts.org/.../electoral-college-states...

[3] INFO - The 2023–2024 U.S. Senate Is Exceedingly Unrepresentative in Multiple Ways

https://mettlinger.medium.com/the-2023-senate-will-be...

[4] INFO - Apportionment of Seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and Average Population Per Seat: 1910 to 2020

https://www2.census.gov/.../apportionment-data-table.pdf

AI on the Future of the United States

Update: As pointed out in the comments here, the original post has been removed from Reddit. There is still a long comment thread on the Reddit post, which includes some posts from Redditors who have ran the prompt on ChatGPT and other AI systems with similar results. I ran the original post through the free version of Microsoft's Copilot with similar projections though not as detailed or pessimistic. Google Gemini refused to provide an answer.

A Redditor asked ChatGPT to forecast the future of the United States if the Republican regime continues its current policies. 

It's exactly as many of us have predicted and it's pretty damn grim.  This is just the first part, and that's bad enough.

2025-2030: The First Five Years

Social Outlook

Civil Unrest and Authoritarian Crackdowns

Mass protests, civil disobedience, and violent clashes will increase, particularly as civil rights protections are rolled back.

The government will likely respond with expanded law enforcement powers, increased surveillance, and a crackdown on dissent, citing national security.

Journalistic freedom will erode, with targeted crackdowns on media outlets that oppose the administration.

2. Re-education Camps and Institutionalization of the Mentally Unwell

The reopening of state-run mental institutions will begin with "voluntary" participation but transition into forced institutionalization, particularly for homeless individuals and those deemed politically or socially disruptive.

These camps will become a tool for ideological enforcement, with dissenters, activists, and marginalized groups facing detainment.

3. Mass Exodus of Professionals and Talent

As freedoms erode, a significant portion of highly educated professionals (academics, scientists, tech workers) will seek to leave the country.

Brain drain will reduce America’s global competitiveness, particularly in scientific research and innovation.

And it gets worse, much worse.  

Featured Links - February 17, 2024

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Winter water barrels

• Make the most of the snipping tools in Windows. "As usual with Windows, there isn’t just one way to snip, clip, or capture a screenshot of part of your screen. There’s a handful of options in Windows 10 and a more powerful new tool just for Windows 11."
• Canadian residents are racing to save the data in Trump's crosshairs. "Guerilla effort underway to preserve medical, environmental data from deletion."
• Appeasement at Munich by historian Timothy Snyder. The path the world is on is much like the world of 1938, and we know how that ended, though the current US administration apparently doesn't. 
• ‘A Maze the Size of Earth’: New AI Tackles Math Problems That Take Millions of Steps. "A newly developed machine learning algorithm is taking on math problems that have vexed experts for decades."
• Why the COVID Deniers Won (archive link). "Lessons from the pandemic and its aftermath."
• On Having a Maximum Wealth. "A small thought experiment." Interesting but it doesn't go far enough. I would tax all income over $1,000,000 at 90 percent, and 100 percent over $10,000,000. I'd set a minimum corporate tax rate of 25% and graduate that based on revenue as well. It would be higher on income that wasn't based on sales or production. 
• Librarians gain protections in some states as book bans soar. "New Jersey just joined at least five other states that have taken steps against school library censorship."
• A ‘True Crime’ Documentary Series Has Millions of Views. The Murders Are All AI-Generated. 'The creator of a viral "true crime" series where the murders were all invented by AI explains how he did it.'

Photo of the Week - February 16, 2025

This is from a couple of weeks ago but given that winter hasn't let up at all, it's a suitable post. I took this with my Pixel 8 Pro along Highway 28 between Peterborough and Port Hope in the middle of a fairly strong snow squall. 

Trees in the winter

Saturday Sounds - Branford Marsalis Quartet - 2023/10/17 - San Bernardo, Chile

I saw the Branford Marsalis Quarter at Koerner Hall in Toronto a week ago and am still buzzed about the performance. Since then, I've been looking for a recent good-quality set to share here and this is the best I've come across so far. It features Branford with his quartet at the San Bernardo Jazz Festival in Chile on October 17, 2023. Like the Toronto show, it features Branford and the quartet in full flight with brilliant playing and telepathic interplay between the musicians. My favourite piece from the concert is "As Summer Into Autumn Slips". 

I think the only song he played in Toronto was "The Mighty Sword". 

1. The Mighty Sword

2. In A Mellow Tone

3. The Windup

4. As Summer Into Autumn Slips

5. Teo (T. Monk)

6. In The Crease

7. Encore: St. James Infirmary

This is an official production of the festival and both video and audio are first rate. Enjoy.

We're Toast 57

This post is a collection of links that support my increasingly strong feeling that the human race (or at least our technological civilization) is doomed. 

Birds in the fog

• An Extremely Violent Global Pandemic” – Mysterious Disease Wipes Out Sea Urchins Worldwide. “This is an extremely violent global pandemic. The Caribbean, Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean are critical regions for the world’s coral reefs, and mortality rates for sea urchins in these areas are very high — over 90 percent. As of now, we have no evidence of this pathogen in Pacific Ocean sea urchins (where some of the world’s largest and most vital coral reefs are located), but this is something we are actively investigating.”
• A Second Type of H5N1 Bird Flu Jumped From Cows to Humans. "The latest human case of H5N1 is the first in the state of Nevada."
• Human and nature dynamics (HANDY): Modeling inequality and use of resources in the collapse or sustainability of societies. "The new dynamics of this model can also reproduce the irreversible collapses found in history. Collapse can be avoided, and population can reach a steady state at maximum carrying capacity if the rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level and if resources are distributed equitably." And how likely do you think that is?
• Unprecedented Starlink reentries. "What we're observing is a giant uncontrolled experiment in atmospheric chemistry. The demise of just one Gen1 Starlink satellite produces about 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of aluminum oxide, a compound that eats away at the ozone layer. A new study finds these oxides have increased 8-fold between 2016 and 2022, and the recent surge is increasing the pollution even more."
• Climate change target of 2C is ‘dead’, says renowned climate scientist. "Prof James Hansen says pace of global heating has been significantly underestimated, though other scientists disagree." Typical journalist bothsideism. I expected better from The Guardian. The 2C target might have been sustainable if Harris had won the US presidential election, but now? I think not.
• Scientists brace ‘for the worst’ as Trump purges climate mentions from websites. "Trump administration pulling references online ‘won’t make crisis’ stop affecting Americans’ lives, say experts." See this article for a positive reaction to what's happening. 
• Differences between Influenza H5N1, A/H1N1 2009, and SARS-CoV-2 in a pandemic risk scenario. "Urgent action is required to mitigate the negative impact of H5N1 on the animal and ecosystem health spheres if we are to reduce its ecological impact and the risk to human health." I'm not holding my breath for that to happen, but I am stocking up on KN95 masks. 
• Donald Trump’s Second Term Will Be Bad News for Endangered Ocean and Coastal Animals. "The waters around the United States are home to many threatened species who need science-based conservation policies to save them from extinction. They won’t get that for the next four years." Nor will any other species, including us. 
• Earth's oceans are filled with what scientists are calling "dark vessels". "The findings reveal staggering gaps in public tracking systems, raising urgent concerns about maritime transparency, environmental sustainability, and global security."
• Sand and dust storms: a growing global health threat calls for international health studies to support policy action. "Sand and dust storms increasingly threaten global environmental and public health. To date, 150 countries are directly affected, with more than 100 classified as non-dust source regions."