[khriss]

I can understand why this change happened. Even if American equipment is superior, there is a lot of value to not depending on a supposed 'ally' which

* Arbitrarily slapped high tariffs on all goods from Canada while exempting Russia and Belarus.

* Threatened to take over the country by force.

* Officially suspended the Permanent Joint Board on Defense between US and Canada because of criticism of US foreign policy by the Canadian PM

[adjejmxbdjdn]

From a very practical PoV, the only military threat to Canada is from the U.S.

Even if the U.S. and Canada are enemies, if Canada is being attacked by a country that is not the U.S., then the U.S. will come to its defense because they don’t want another nation with the capability to attack Canada to have a North American presence.

So given that the U.S. is the only possible military threat to the U.S., and now that the U.S. has openly threatened Canada, it’s incredibly silly to buy weaponry from the only country that could militarily attack you and almost certainly won’t share repair material, parts, software source etc. and possibly has a kill switch.

[detourdog]

The Gripen is also a very practical design and much simpler to support. Canada can host the data locally as opposed to in the USA. The F-35 is very sophisticated and but maybe to a fault. I'm reminded of how technically superior Germany's vehicles were in WW2. The simplicity and field serviceability the USA vehicles had made a difference in combat.

[8note]

its currently doubtful that the US would come to canada's defense

maybe offer some targetting intelligence, but most likely the US government would look to sell out canada for peanuts, the same as trump has been looking for with ukraine, and now taiwan

[jandrewrogers]

If the US decided to attack Canada then having Swedish 4th generation fighters instead of US 5th generation fighters will make literally no difference in the outcome. This isn't a serious calculus.

[ojl]

The Gripen E is 4.5 gen, and I am not sure having US fighters in a war against US would be so much better.

[chaostheory]

Russia is the other threat, but yes the US is the greater threat now

[daneel_w]

> "Even if American equipment is superior ..."

To address the article's context, is the E-3 Sentry superior to the Erieye/GlobalEye?

[bigfatkitten]

The E-3 is a dinosaur.

The E-7 Wedgetail is a vastly more capable platform than the Erieye/GlobalEye in pretty much every way, but costs four times as much, and there are other issues with Canada and Boeing as have been pointed out by another commenter.

[nradov]

Delivery schedules are also likely a factor. Assuming the USAF actually orders the E-7, they'll probably get first priority on the Boeing production line. Any export orders would have to wait.

[stackghost]

>The E-7 Wedgetail is a vastly more capable platform than the Erieye/GlobalEye in pretty much every way

The airframe itself, perhaps. As for the radar, that remains to be seen. The E-7 uses an L-band AESA radar, whereas the GlobalEye's radar operates in the higher-frequency S-band. In general, higher frequencies are better for engaging smaller/faster targets, but perform worse in adverse weather conditions.

It's been a long time since I took my electronic warfare courses, but in a situation where the radar is expected to spot small drones and other targets I would prefer a higher frequency radar.

It should be noted that the US military itself didn't want the Wedgetail in favor of a space-based solution, until Hegseth forced them for publicity reasons.

[nradov]

Was it just a publicity issue? There was a real risk of a capability gap in that all of the old E-3 airframes would have to be retired long before a space based solution could possibility come online. Plus in an era of anti-satellite weapons proliferation, a crewed aircraft might actually turn out to be more survivable.

[stackghost]

Hypocritically, Kegsbreath himself is on record saying the concern was about E-7 survivability: https://www.flightglobal.com/fixed-wing/2025/06/us-defence-s...

[nickff]

The comparable aircraft is the more modern E-7 Wedgetail, which has many features that are superior for Canada's use case (notably including range and NORAD integration). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_E-7_Wedgetail

Canada has unfortunately been in conflict with Boeing since before either of Trump's terms, originally triggered by Boeing's trade complaints regarding Bombardier's government subsidies.

[8note]

is norad integration actually important?

norad might not exist in 5-10 years

[nickff]

Canada has little used for airborne early warning outside of NORAD; the country has little independent air defense, and has not performed any foreign air superiority missions since the Cold Warz

[munk-a]

> Even if American equipment is superior

I'd mention that whether a piece of tech can beat another one on one is a consideration but a larger concern is how maintainable your fleet is. Canada is specifically moving to grow ties with the EU (and has joined their defense industry network) which really incentivizes having a fleet that is a similar makeup to other European countries.

The tariffs and international unpredictability of the US is one motivator - but growing closer to EU markets is also a specific focus of the Carney government. The current Trump administration isn't even the only rationale for this - in 2017 the US imposed extremely heavy tariffs on Bombardier that bankrupted the majority of the corporation.

[jleyank]

They also make the underlying bird, so parts aside from the electronics are native.

[bluegatty]

There are a ton of considerations, starting with 'Doctrine', then tactics, other equipment, integration, other kinds of dependencies. So many things.

Often there are acute, specific needs, aka Canada has to land these all the time in the arctic, you need bigger hangars for the bigger gear, maybe we need 'more units for wider coverage' over large land mass.

Some gear is better v Russians, some gear for China threat.

Etc. Etc.

[pfannkuchen]

> while exempting Russia and Belarus

I thought they were sanctioned to hell and back. Do tariffs even apply as a concept?

[greenleafone7]

Vastly inferior and overpriced. From now till delivery the US will blackmail the buyer with delays and increase the agreed upon price at least 3 times. Standard practice.

[throwaway27448]

It's kind of insane they trusted us to begin with. Why?

[slavik81]

Americans were our brothers. We had been partners for over a hundred years.

[dwd]

And yet...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red

[noir_lord]

Not defending the US here (not least because as a European I'm deeply pissed at the US government and the people backing it) but every country with a large military has similar plans, they are used as a training exercise/staff exercise rather than as realistic plans (as noted in the article you linked).

[fakedang]

I like this analogy - sparring with each other like toddlers do, before realizing that they have a lot in common as they age, like the English language, industrialization, the systemic abuse of natives, Big Oil, the World Wars and racism.

Now that they're older, they're sparring once again, just like siblings do over the parents' estate.

[threecheese]

I like your analogy, and want to add a sad addendum: parental illness and death is frequently the cause of sibling estrangement. Let’s hope this isn’t prolonged.

[gflarity]

This is terrible analogy. We're more like neighbours, and US is a bully. We made a decision not to have much a fence before we were friendly neighbours. We regret that decision, and are planting a hedge and reaching out to our other "neighbours" for support.

The whole neighbourhood thinks you're assholes and bullies, we're all scared. But that is bring us closer together as result, so there's some upside.

Racism? Oh man, visit any other country that is more homogenous.... lol. Everything is relative.

[fakedang]

Siblings can also be bullies.

Canadian and American racism is documented in specific events, unlike in other countries. I'd be hard pressed to find specific racism-driven events in Poland or Czechia, even though they top the racist charts.

I'm not American so your second point is completely moot.

[throwaway27448]

Sir, Nawrocki is only the president because of racist pressures. I don't even hate him but you cannot argue that he would be elected if it weren't for fear of foreigners.

[asdff]

Why trust anyone? Really what stops a Trump from getting elected anywhere else? The citizens seem smarter or less bigoted? Are you sure that will always be the case given the agitprop in every form of media and internet communication in every language on earth?

[mhb]

> Why trust anyone?

Because comparative advantage.

[JuniperMesos]

There have been many elections in many political entities where a politician got elected because one group of citizens really liked that politician; and another group of citizens thought that politician was extremely, historically bad. This is inherent to mass democracy itself in any polity where there are real and deep-seated differences between different groups of the electorate. "A Trump" - in the sense of a politician whose opponents describe in apocalyptic terms and consider that politician's supporters to be stupid and bigoted - gets elected all the time in all sorts of places.

[throwaway27448]

True. But we seem like the least trustworthy people on earth at the moment. After israel, anyway.

Trump has nothing to do with it.

[datsci_est_2015]

> Trump has nothing to do with it.

Genuinely, what makes the US untrustworthy if not Trump? I’m curious what I may be missing.

[noir_lord]

The seventy odd million people who looked at Trump and everything he is and then voted for him.

The entire congress and senate of the US who sit by while he does this and the supreme court who lets him, entire departments of the US government co-opted by sycophants put in place by Trump.

There is little to trust in the United States at the moment, you look a lot like the Weimar republic.

[datsci_est_2015]

I guess I internally equate “Trump” and “Trumpism” - who’s to say what the chicken and the egg is with that whole situation.

> The entire congress and senate of the US who sit by while he does this and the supreme court who lets him, entire departments of the US government co-opted by sycophants put in place by Trump.

It is amazing how much people bend the knee to further their own ends. People like Stephen Miller who probably see Trump as a useful idiot, and hold great contempt for him, as long as he can enact his white supremacist agenda.

The leftist circles I run in like to joke that this could’ve just been properly avoided if we hadn’t fumbled reconstruction as a nation.

[LtWorf]

Remember the guy who promised he'd shut down Guantanamo? Or the guy who made up some weapons so he could invade Irak? Or the guy who ordered Northstream to be blown up?

[throwaway27448]

> Genuinely, what makes the US untrustworthy if not Trump?

We invaded Korea, and then Vietnam, and a few hundred other interventions that don't seem to be sanctioned by the international community. All because of a hardon for ideology that doesn't seem to actually reflect the interests of the people who live here.

[red-iron-pine]

> We invaded Korea

what a terrible bad faith arguemnt

N Korea invaded the south and the UN voted to create a joint force in there to defend it.

[asdff]

Most of those were sanctioned by the international community. Look at the participants.

[asdff]

Israel seems trustworthy in the sense that their priorities and aims are abundantly clear to everyone. People are pissed about Israel for Iran right now, but, I mean, there is a reason why they are attacking Iran right now and not Egypt or Turkey. You go about and poke the bear like Iran has done for decades with Israel, you get these outcomes. Egypt tried to poke the bear but that was decades ago and they've since learned there is nothing to gain there.

[throwaway27448]

Hey that's up to you. I will never vote for a person who supports Israel. Our parents may have been retarded but we don't have to be. I just see a state devoted to slaughtering as many people as they can. Iran looks like a saint compared to them.

[asdff]

I'm not supportive of them either. I just don't consider them untrustworthy though. Everything they do is exactly what they've always done since that state was formed. Easily the most predictable nation on earth, Israel. Easy way to get Israel off your back though? Stop funding terrorists like Hamas and Hezbollah that inevitably do something stupid to provoke the Israelis into armed conflict. It is really that simple.

[watwut]

I mean, you dont know much about Iran, I guess. Like, it is a victim in this was and Israel is apartheid state.

None of that makes Iran better, not even now as they still execute daily. And are extremely harsh to own minorities. Oh, and to whole one gender.

Iran looks like saint when you ignore Iran actions. And again, yes, the war was bad decision.

[gchamonlive]

Nobody is buying this narrative of Israel being provoked, because the reaction to the provocation, if there ever was one, is completely disproportional.

Israel had settlements in Palestine way before the conflict outbreak, and nothing explains the systematic targeting of civilian infrastructure on Lebanon but for Israel just going supernova, like Germany and Japan back then.

[bluGill]

Israel's faults do not mean they were not provoked. Iran has been sending everything they can to anyone who wants to harm Israel.

What Israel has done is a completely irrelevant to what Iran has been doing.

[watwut]

Trump can be voted in everywhere, but american constitution makes curruption effectively legal, president effectively lawless and provides no balance to unchecked presidential power. Money in politics are speech, so just unlimited, so any person even having change to be president have to do what Epstein class like.

And it is constitution itself. America had lawd trying to deal with above and supreme court gutted them.

[khriss]

Because Trump is a new, and (hopefully!) a one time phenomenon.

He is unique in that he seems to have absolute control over the Republican base which makes all internal party checks fail. The rest is provided by a hyper polarized media landscape and a conservative supreme court majority that seems to be open to radical upheavals. The combination of all three has rendered the constitutional safe guards ineffective. In other words, we seem to have run into an edge case in the US constitution.

The supreme court won't change materially in the near future and likely the polarization will continue, but it's hard to image someone in the future with such an absolute grip on either party. So, hopefully a soft restart of the system in 2028 will be the last of this edge case for a while. That's the hope, anyway!

The two countries have far more in common shared interests than differences, so odds are things will drift back to normal in the future.

[dleslie]

Trump did not rise to power in isolation. He has not remained in isolation while in power. Voter support for Trump is still reasonably strong, and Trump and his supporters have ensured that the mechanisms of Government are packed with loyalists.

America chose this. America continues to tolerate this. America enabled this.

This isn't something that Trump can be scapegoated for. This is what many Americans wanted, or at the very least, it is what many Americans are willing to tolerate.

[Planktonne]

> Because Trump is a new, and (hopefully!) a one time phenomenon.

Trump is already, on his own, a two-time phenomenon. Leaving aside broader cultural issues and patterns, "one-time only" has been clearly incorrect for a while.

[JuniperMesos]

> He is unique in that he seems to have absolute control over the Republican base which makes all internal party checks fail. The rest is provided by a hyper polarized media landscape and a conservative supreme court majority that seems to be open to radical upheavals. The combination of all three has rendered the constitutional safe guards ineffective. In other words, we seem to have run into an edge case in the US constitution.

The US constitution has absolutely nothing at all to say about political parties or the particular state of the media landscape, or for that matter the partisan alignment of justices of the supreme court. It's incoherent to suggest that there are "constitutional safe guards" that should have prevented the election of a president (or the exercise of power by that president), who is supported by about one-half of a very polarized electorate and opposed by a separate one-half. Everything about the Trump presidency is as constitutional as every previous US presidency, including the phenomenon of opponents of the president trying to claim that specific things they do are or should be unconstitutional.

[crote]

The problem is that it isn't just an "edge case" in the constitution - the whole thing is fundamentally flawed from the very beginning. The US isn't going to be trustworthy until it manages to reshape itself into a proper democracy with functional checks and balances.

Considering the right-wing politicians are trying to turn the country into a theocratic nationalistic dictatorship and the "left-wing" politicians are content with getting votes by nothing more than not being right-wing and collecting corporate bribes: good luck with that.

[red-iron-pine]

> Because Trump is a new, and (hopefully!) a one time phenomenon.

unless the US extinguishes all of its billionaires and somehow convinces 1/3 to 1/2 of their population to not vote against their own interests it'll happen again

[pepperoni_pizza]

Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Trump - not a one time phenomenon, more of a natural progression.

[cmrdporcupine]

You missed the absolutely huge one: that the plane it's based around is a Bombardier aircraft manufactured here in Canada.

And in general this is how Saab has tried to court us -- by making promises (how real is unclear) to bring manufacturing jobs to Canada to build things.

That is something the US has not done, will not do, and most importantly cannot do under Trump/Bissent/etc.

Canada is very unlikely to be invaded, so the actual military effectiveness / superiority is only one factor. Reducing unemployment and enhancing our manufacturing sector is as or more important.

[lysace]

> Canada is very unlikely to be invaded

Except from the south.

[cmrdporcupine]

Or, as it turns out, from within. (Looking at you, Danielle Smith).

But yes you're right. The only times we've been invaded were from that direction.

[red-iron-pine]

Danielle Smith is plainly a US agit-prop effort. Probably in concert with the Russians, since funding separatists is their MO

[lysace]

> But yes you're right. The only times we've been invaded were from that direction.

Looked it up:

4 Times the U.S. Invaded Canada

https://www.mentalfloss.com/history/war/4-times-us-invaded-c...

[anthomtb]

They really had to stretch for #4.

[cwillu]

> Or, as it turns out, from within. (Looking at you, Danielle Smith).

Pretty sure that's a prong of the southern strategy.

[nxm]

If it’s invaded then a few Swedish panes will really not matter

[8note]

ukrainian drones will though, and saab is also selling to ukraine

[cyanydeez]

aside from political alignment, theres a lot of geographic, budget and climate and stategic alignments that would put swdeen designers in the same headspace.

[poiuyt098]

A lot of blame-trump-copium, itt

this has been happening before anyone even thought trump would run: in 2015 trudeau ran on cancelling the f35 purchase. So what did obama do to canadians?

[carlosjobim]

> * Arbitrarily slapped high tariffs on all goods from Canada while exempting Russia and Belarus.

This is due to sanctions. There is no trade between Russia and the USA to put tariffs on.

[usrusr]

Makes me wonder what the penguins of Heard and McDonald Islands would say about this

[866-RON-0-FEZ]

We call this confirmation bias.

The Saab is likely cheaper to operate as it's a smaller plane and Canada only has to patrol its northern border.

[danesparza]

"We call this confirmation bias".

I'm genuinely curious to know what you think the author's pre-existing beliefs are.

You seem to have a few of your own: "Canada only has to patrol its northern border"

[red-iron-pine]

> You seem to have a few of your own: "Canada only has to patrol its northern border"

the Canadians do not aggressively patrol the southern border because that is where all of the people are -- unlike the north -- and because the reality is that the entire Canadian military is basically a speedbump for if/when the US invaded in earnest.

[greenleafone7]

Americans: X country is only a speed bump for our awesome military. Also Americans: Have never managed to win a single war on their own while usually fighting underdeveloped tribes whose most advanced equipment is sandals, while at the same time both allies and enemies have a billion jokes on how bad they actually are.

You need a special kind of personality to be this confident while currently losing a war, one that is, well, associated with Americans.

[asdff]

Open a history book. They do a lot more than patrol the northern border. Canada was involved in WWI, WWII, Korea, Iraq 1 and 2, Fall of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libyan civil war, Iraq civil war, Syrian civil war and ISIS conflict, Yemeni civil war, and a smattering of other conflicts over the past century.

[jleyank]

Canada, as a commonwealth country, was involved in ww I and ww ii years before the us decided to get involved. Or more involved than selling arms.

[mikeyouse]

> Canada only has to patrol its northern border.

At what point on this current trajectory in the US would that change... mostly facetiously, but not entirely..

[petcat]

Canada would only have to patrol its southern Alberta border /s

No coincidence that Albertans are sparking up the seceding issue again. When 10% of the population produces nearly 20% of the country's GDP it's a breeding ground for contempt. And it also seems like Albertans are the butt of a lot of jokes from the other Canadians anyway.

I'm sure this US government would love to see an "independent" Alberta.

[jamie_ca]

You're rounding both ways to exaggerate your point. 2024 numbers, Stats Canada (via Wikipedia) has Alberta at 11.9% population, and 15.25% GDP.

They (and Sask too) do swing on the higher end in GDP per capita, but it's not a 2:1 by any stretch.

[throw0101c]

> […] 15.25% GDP.

Which isn't that far off from BC's 13.80%:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_provinces_and...

[tempestn]

And this is mostly thanks to the oil sands. Will that always be the economic engine it is today?

[rubayeet]

This is false. Alberta is NOT the economic engine of Canada, that’s a huge misconception of a group of Canadians (mostly Albertans) [0]

[0] https://youtu.be/5lSJpqA8RU4?si=fxwKpUFFKO7gK63E

[cmrdporcupine]

You're right but you should cite something other than the CBC, since it will just be immediately dismissed by the biased as biased.

Alberta is very important economically. I'm from there. Ontario (I live there) and Quebec and BC are also massively important. And fanning the flames of disinformation and playing grievance politics to make Albertans feel discriminated against has become an extremely serious problem.

Wab Kinew was very eloquent on this topic yesterday.

[jleyank]

I would think Ontario is the centre of Canada as it has the most people and the financial centre. Google's AI says 38% of GDP. And the problem Alberta faces is who wants to separate, what do they want to do afterwards and what ground do they actually own (vs. treaties that predate Alberta).

When Alberta at least catches up to Quebec in practicing being independent (runs its own police, collects its own taxes, has its own pension system, maintains foreign services, ... They might decide the extra taxes to pay for such is less "fun". And they need a border to ship stuff through.

[AlexandrB]

Did you watch this video? About half way through he confirms that Alberta has the highest GDP/capita in Canada and is the largest (per capita) tax contributor. Ontario is obviously larger in absolute terms, but it has at least 4x the population.

[cmrdporcupine]

As with any time you deploy an average... (And I'd expect better on this forum of all places)

Show me the distribution. Show me the median not just the mean. Show me the standard deviation.

Otherwise ... abused.

Yes, we all know oil is an extremely profitable (and environmentally destructive) commodity. That doesn't make the typical Albertans somehow responsible for holding up all of confederation. Just means oil is making some people very rich. For now.

I'm from there and my family is in Alberta. I can tell you now that the oil industry ain't doing jack squat for them.

[throw0101c]

> About half way through he confirms that Alberta has the highest GDP/capita in Canada and is the largest (per capita) tax contributor.

Nunavut and NWT have higher per capita numbers, but that's territory versus province:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_provinces_and...

Yukon and SK are in the >90k range, both ~5k below AB.

[dessimus]

So then by your arguments above, you're good with California leaving since they'd be a G6 nation on their own?

Because as you would might say: I'm sure this Canadian government would love to see an "independent" California.

[petcat]

Texas has entertained the idea of seceding for 150 years. And they would be a G7 country if they did. But they would have to fight a war to do it. USA already went through this once.

The only thing really stopping Alberta from leaving is whether or not BC, Ontario, and Quebec are willing to fight a war to stop it.

And that gets a lot more complicated if the US also wants Alberta to go independent....

[stackghost]

>The only thing really stopping Alberta from leaving is whether or not BC, Ontario, and Quebec are willing to fight a war to stop it.

Unlike the individual US states, Alberta never joined Canada. It was not an entity that existed prior to Canada's confederation. Alberta was basically pencil-whipped into existence by carving out a chunk of an already existing territory (the Northwest Territory).

Despite American and Russian destabilization campaigns in Canada, there is no legal mechanism by which Canadian provinces can unilaterally secede.

>And that gets a lot more complicated if the US also wants Alberta to go independent....

Recent past polling overwhelmingly showed Albertans in favor of remaining in Canada. This latest frenzy is widely known to be a foreign influence operation.

[selectodude]

Texas would be a G7 nation for about a week if they seceded from the US. Being the logistics hub for a country only works if you’re part of that country.

[bryanlarsen]

The instant Alberta secedes from Canada, the Indigenous would secede all unceded Treaty land from the independent Alberta. Which includes all of the tar sands, the source of Alberta's wealth.

Canada might not be willing to fight, but the Indigenous probably are.

[dessimus]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say if Canada wasn't willing to let Quebec leave, and they've tried with significantly more effort than Alberta ever has, then they're not going to let Alberta go.

[swader999]

We already have a clause in our constitution to allow for orderly withdrawal from Canada. We'd have to resolve the first Nations angle which would probably be more of a hurdle.

[peteyPete]

Of course the US gov would love to see an "independent" Alberta... They'd see that as easy oil reserves to put their hands on and a weaker Canada. They're working with traitors in separatist organizations as well as PP and trying to import MAGA into Canada.. Albertan's, due solely to their location, stand on oil riches... They don't have to do much to be the country's highest earners, its literally handed to them on a sticky black oil platter. (Not saying they don't work hard... loads of people work just as hard in other fields that aren't covered in gold though). They have the highest median pay in Canada, pay the least taxes.. Yet still spend their time crying and saying they're keeping Canada afloat... They're not Canada's highest GDP province... And other provinces don't spend their time trying to sell out to the US, even after the US threatening to destroy Canada, economically or otherwise. That's treason my guy. There's not too many ways to say it. Also, Alberta's population isn't even close to having the votes to even considering separating, without getting into all the other issues they're trying to pretend don't matter. The whole thing is a joke.

[wat10000]

According to Wikipedia, Alberta accounts for 11.52% of the national population and 15.25% of the GDP. Such injustice.

[AlexandrB]

That's not the injustice. The problem is that Alberta's political interests are very poorly (if at all) represented federally. This has come to a head a few times in the past with things like cancelled pipeline projects or the NEP[1]. So the issue is that Alberta has 11.52% of the population, contributes 15.25% of the GDP, yet must constantly fight against policies that put it at a disadvantage or run counter to its political leanings.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Energy_Program

> Estimates have placed Alberta's losses between $50 billion and $100 billion because of the NEP.[32][33] Alberta still initially enjoyed an economic surplus due to high oil prices, but the surplus was heavily reduced by the NEP, which, in turn, stymied many of Lougheed's policies for economic diversification to reduce Alberta's dependence on the cyclical energy industry, such as the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund, and also left the province with an infrastructure deficit. In particular, the Alberta Heritage Fund was meant to save as much of the earnings during high oil prices to act as a "rainy day" cushion if oil prices collapsed because of the cyclical nature of the oil and gas industry.

[bryanlarsen]

Cancelled pipeline projects? Ottawa doesn't cancel pipeline projects. All the problems with pipeline projects are caused by environmental reviews etc, which fall under legislation brought in by Stephen Harper, an Albertan.

It's much the opposite, Canada just spent $34B to ensure the Trans-Mountain pipeline got built. Alberta is the one that gets the resource revenue, but it's Ottawa that has to pay for your pipelines. That's hardly fair.

Alberta has one legitimate grievance, the NEP. Which is a plan that was cancelled by Mulroney over 40 years ago.

[vohk]

The AHSTF performed poorly because successive Albertan provincial governments slashed contributions to it, not because of the ghost of the NEP. It was established in 1976, then contributions were cut in half in 1983, and eliminated entirely in 1987. The NEP was gone by 1985.

What hurt Alberta was every cyclical crash in oil prices, and their steadfast refusal to implement additional revenue streams like a provincial sales tax while spending instead of saving their resource-boom surpluses.

[squigz]

> And it also seems like Albertans are the butt of a lot of jokes from the other Canadians anyway.

This is hardly my experience as a Canadian. They're not Newfoundlanders, for crying out loud...

[kergonath]

I thought Québec-bashing was a national sport.

[asdff]

What is stopping the Swedes from electing a jackass? They seem smart for now? It happens in Europe too. All these weaknesses are liable for any country in a democratic model where executive is controlled via popular vote. Population is trivial to manipulate. This is the new world. Running to Sweden doesn't change the underlying issue of the ease of manipulating an electorate using technological affordances to capture a nation from the inside without a single shot fired.

[vkou]

Nothing, but when your spouse turns into an abusive piece of shit, breaking up with them and looking for a new one is the right call.

Sure, the new one might turn into one too, but that's no reason to stay with one who is definitely one.

Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback. That's the obvious result of Trumpism - when you seek to turn every interaction into a short-term win for you, people simply stop doing business with you whenever they can avoid it.

Tens of millions of Americans voted for this guy three times, overwhelmingly twice - this is how the country wants to act.

If he and his cronies are removed from power and prosecuted and everyone pinkie swears to never go down this road again, maybe we can look into rebuilding some of that trust. In the meantime, you reap what you sow.

[asdff]

Run from the US. Create a new seat of power all you want. Putin will put in his manchurian candidate wherever the power lies. The fact this happened to the US is really a byproduct of its global position. So create a new global leader, and that will be the new target for capture via propagandizing the electorate and electing a sympathizer. Running never solves anything. The problem is still the problem, and is not getting addressed.

[vkou]

Democracy in the US is sick at the best of times. It's a fundamental flaw in strong executive presidential republics, doubled down on by the legislatures ability to constantly redistrict in a way that advantages the incumbents, tripled down on by the lack of a plausible mechanism to have a non-confidence motion.

Canada can't solve this problem inside US politics. Only Americans can, at any one of the three boxes. It can only work to disentangle it's critical dependencies, and to protect its own interests.

[asdff]

And democracy isn't sick in the UK that elected conservatives to leave from the EU? It isn't sick in Hungary that elected Orban? It isn't sick in Germany where 1/4 of the bundestag is comprised of AfD? Far right is rising in Canada too in recent years (1).

1. https://universityaffairs.ca/features/northern-shift/

[vkou]

Citing one bad election or referendum, and another country that just had a complete political upheaval that has blown up in our good friend Orban's face, and a third that's up in the air isn't as strong an argument as you would hope it to be.

Any country can elect chucklefucks or vote for something stupid. Some of them have systems that are more resistant to the long-term damage they cause. Some of them are less. The US is definitely in the 'less' category as all of the checks and balances and systemic inertia completely collapsed.

Also, the other big difference is that when Hungary or the UK sneezes, Canada doesn't catch a cold.

[paddim8]

It can happen in Sweden too but it is less likely to. We don't have a president, we have a prime minister with limited power. We have a stronger democracy run by coalitions instead of a single party. One jackass is not enough in Sweden.

[Paradigma11]

I do think first past the post is a big part of the problem. Combined with primaries dominated by the most radical parts of the population you have the recipe for very unhinged results.