The Hour of Decision for Canada

“The time has come,' the Walrus said, To talk of many things: Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —, Of cabbages — and kings —`” - Lewis Carroll’s ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter.’

Shoes - as is “walk the walk”; Ships as in trade relationships, Sealing wax - as in signed agreements, Cabbages - as in secure food supply; Kings - and in the present situation - of rejecting one: Trump.

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In the April election in Canada, people united to some extent to reject the social-conservative ideology of Pierre Poilievre (PP) which resulted in a minority Liberal government lead by the American Banker (Mark Carney, a Goldman Sachs alumni). But in the campaign, the former Liberal party took on most of PP’s policy platform except for the pure social conservative agenda, resulting in a neo-liberal coalition government, essentially a majority with no effective opposition except for a single voice, Elizabeth May of the Green Party.

The former labour party, the so-called “New Democrats” were almost wiped out and continue in their policy vacuum, firewalled from public input and controlled by labour union executives. The New Democrats have essentially abandoned leftist politics after a brief renaissance during the years of the Waffle Manifesto.

“The Manifesto for an Independent Socialist Canada was a document drafted by a leftist faction of Canada's New Democratic Party, known as the Waffle, in 1969. It outlined the Waffle's deep resentment of the "American Empire" and the organization's commitment to furthering the socialist cause in Canada within the template of a successful democracy. The manifesto also included the Waffle movement's feeling toward Quebec sovereignty.”

“The Manifesto helped contribute to a debate on American control of the Canadian economy and particularly the extent of US ownership of Canadian business and resources and the emergence in Canada of a branch-plant economy. The Liberal government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau instituted attempts to assert domestic economic control such as the creation of Petro-Canada, meant to assert Canadian control of the energy sector, and the Foreign Investment Review Agency, intended to review and limit foreign ownership and particularly American takeovers of Canadian companies. These measures were introduced in part due to pressure by the NDP, particularly during the minority government that followed the 1972 election. The NDP, in turn, had urged these measures in part due to pressure by the Waffle within the party.” (Wikipedia)

Young people of course can’t remember it, but the Waffle movement was the only, ONLY, bright spot in Canadian politics, ever. But as I recall, it died on the floor of the convention. Since then, the NDP has swallowed the neo-liberal pill, accepting the neo-liberal consensus, see page 77 in “Harperism.” Labour parties, in years past, have brought in many progressive programs, but have been moving away from socialist themes. Organized labour is actually a piece of the industrial machinery, a sidecar to capitalism, so have the potential to steer away from progressive ideals.

Neo-liberalism was built by big business beginning in 1947 with the Mont Pelerin Society and developing into a mass of interlinked think-tanks around the world, as previously outlined. This ultra-conservative program was carefully crafted over many years, to bring their new foundations of economic thinking into wide-spread acceptance, until their ideas form the framework of every conversation. It is hard to think outside of that box. Meanwhile, the political Left has just dallied along, day to day, enjoying life, not a care in the world. Exactly like pet cats, and exactly as difficult to herd! So it is almost impossible to get these divergent progressive groups even into one room, let alone agree on even a format for discussion.

So if you have any concern that the environment has been cast aside in the new reckless drive for development-of-everything, or the ridiculous level of income inequality, or any other social concern, you must agree that to make any progress on issues of the Left, after falling almost 80 years behind, really drastic approaches are necessary to start herding these cats!

Goal Number One must be to stop dividing the progressive vote. The New Democrats, especially since they have over the past decade, abandoned any serious leadership, must kick out the union-executive board of directors and focus on progressive ideas. The unions are equipped to fight their own battles, they don’t need to capture a political party to achieve their goals. This new New Democratic Party must join up with the Greens as one electoral unit, and with Elizabeth May already being the most popular choice to be prime minister, she should lead the new entity. Perhaps it has a completely new name, but uses the combined strengths of both old party’s political machinery.

There is no time to lose, being already almost 80 years behind. Time is short, the need is great and the fate of Canada is at stake.

However, is political change even possible in this country? While working in the political system in the late ‘80s at the federal constituency level, I saw that we could talk and talk but time passes and nothing changes - you just don’t have access to the real levers of control - while concurrently, in a real country, Germany, the Berlin Wall came down. Thus the status quo benefits the real owners of the nation.

Besides the difficulty in herding cats, another demerit for the Left is the proliferation of nonsense ideas that they latch on to with tenacity and unreasonableness. Part of this ideation regime is caused by the difficulty of finding any new idea outside of the public consensus which is under neo-liberal thought containment. So if you can think up a new idea, its preciousness defies examination. Another aspect which confines political discussion on both the Left and Right ends of politics, is the decreasing level of intelligence of the general population. That is especially prevalent in the USA but is migrating to Canada as well, can could be associated with the correlation between BMI and IQ¹, as well as the diminishing of the importance of education. A fog of stupidity envelopes the land.

Left-wing ideologues can come up with all manner of “brilliant” ideas such as a different voting scheme such as Prop Rep or Ranked Ballot when the simple solution to fix first-past-the-post is to have run-off elections until a candidate gets a majority.

Another frequent meme is guaranteed annual income, or Universal Basic Income, proposed in a post by Andrew Welsh in which he says, in support of UBI:

“Proposals for using basic income to address poverty typical come in two flavours: (1) Redistributing wealth from the very top to the very bottom, or (2) increasing the movement of money so that it delivers more benefits for more people.”

I’ve addressed poverty in a recent post, Money is Fraud. What is really needed is a complete re-work of the flow of liquidity in society, not patch-work schemes. Perhaps food stamps would be a better means of support than having the System mopping up any new flow of money in UBI. For more on the liquidity issue, there is Prof. Warwick Powell’s latest post on Beyond Solvency. Here are some sections:

“Put simply, not all surpluses are equal, and not all liquidity ends up building real capacity. Without a theory of how liquidity circulates and is absorbed, we risk reinforcing the very dynamics - rentierism, financialisation and systemic entropy-inducing inequality - that critics of austerity seek to overcome.

The problem is not just liquidity creation per se. Rather, it is ungoverned liquidity in a context of declining biophysical returns. In such conditions, liquidity increasingly flows into:

Financial arbitrage and speculation; Over-valuation of long-dated assets; Debt expansion divorced from productive investment; and Unsustainable consumption in wealthy economies.

Even well-meaning public spending can reinforce these trends if not paired with structural transformation of production, distribution and energy systems.

The real question is not “how much can we spend,” but “where will this money flow, and can the system absorb it productively and sustainably?”

The rediscovery of sovereign monetary capacity, whether in chartalist, functional finance, or post-Keynesian traditions, has cleared important intellectual ground. But we cannot stop there. We must evolve these insights to address the emerging realities and concerns of the 21st century: ecological entropy, energy depletion and systemic fragility.”

Those are some powerful statements - do read the full post and pledge a subscription!

But the question I have not figured out yet is, how do Prof. Powell’s monetary theories align with major ideologies? Can one redirect liquidity without stepping into the neoliberal quagmire? This needs more study. But if a restructuring of the monetary system turns out to be a social “good,” then it could become a primary plank in a progressive platform. However, the obstacles are huge since it requires world-wide monetary reset, location of policy levers to regulate liquidity flow and a return of progressives to some actual thinking.

Regardless of which issues might enable more serious development of progressive political participation, the present threat to Canada is existential as well as being a progressive versus neoliberal conflict and as well involves irreversible environmental consequences.

Two columns in the Globe and Mail over the weekend bring these threats into discussion. A column by Michael Ignatief, June 28, page O1, titled “Lament for a Nationalism” considers the topic of a book by his uncle, George Grant, who was a professor of theology at McMaster U., titled “Lament for a Nation” which proposed that the U.S. would inevitably absorb Canada.

Unfortunately we are still spiraling into that pit of despair. Ignatief highlights many of the stepping-stones across the River Styx to our ultimate fate, including the establishment of the Permanent Joint Board of Defence in 1940 at Ogdensburg, N.Y. by McKenzie King and FDR; from 1942 on, integrated war production with the War Production Board chaired by U.S.-born C.D. Howe; further continental integration in the ‘50s and ‘60s including pipelines and electric grids, the 1965 Auto Pact, integration into NORAD and NATO which requires ever-higher defence spending, and now, blatantly sucking up to the Trump regime by considering the ridiculous “Golden Dome.” Recently, even before the Trump regime, sucking up to U.S. imperialism by copying various sanctions and tariffs while the rest of the world more and more considers Canada as being irrelevant on the world stage, just another cling-on to the U.S. hegemony. Instead of further developing “elbows up,” the government is grovelling for a new trade agreement with the Trump regime. Try to understand this - USA is not agreement-capable. Never has been, never will be. It has unserious, perpetually chaotic and unstable governance due to administrative churn.

Along these same lines, the other Globe and Mail article, by Michael Manulak, Lloyd Axworthy and Allan Rock, titled “Ottawa’s foreign policy must catch up with its military spending,” June 30, page A11, tells why Global Affairs Canada must step up its game and be completely rebuilt instead of being an after-thought in governance. More and better diplomacy is required in every aspect of Canada’s relations with the rest of the world, improving a rules-based order by way of the United Nations and the Arctic Council and by greatly stepping up foreign aid. These efforts can’t be secondary to military spending, they must be a priority in developing a pathway to peace.

So this is the question - will Canada attempt to be a sovereign nation or not? If you want to be considered for one of the rotating seats on the UN Security Council, you had best not be a guaranteed “Yes” vote alongside the U.S. Instead of sucking up and “kissing the ring” for a “trade deal,” insist on free trade, rejecting tariff blackmail and instead engage in trade under WTO rules. A disconnect from USA is mandatory, almost to the point of withdrawing diplomatic relations - that is, refusing to recognize the Trump regime. Pull out of NATO - it is an evil in this world², and NO OTHER COUNTRIES are going to come to Canada’s assistance if the U.S. invades. Disconnect from NORAD - enough of running foreign policy by deciding which country is the next “threat.” Cancel the F-35 fighter program, we have seen how poorly these perform for the Zionist entity in attacking Iran. They might work against your own population, but not in actual combat. Canada should, like México, ask for observer status at BRICS+ meetings, on a path to becoming a member, joining the largest part of the world’s population in isolating the failing empire of the West.

Note that each and every one of these pathways could be used as a bargaining chip to get the insane Trump regime to behave. NOT as bargaining chips to suck up for getting any kind of trade deal, merely to get that rogue regime back to conforming to international law. But are any of these ideas possible when almost all people lock down their minds shortly after high school and trend downwards thereafter?

1) -https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-87402-z

Clarke, R.B., Okholm, G.T., Mortensen, E.L. et al. Intelligence and obesity during the obesity epidemic. Sci Rep 15, 4519 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-87402-z

https://psychcentral.com/blog/how-obesity-affects-the-human-brain#4

Yun SY, Yun JY, Lim C, Oh H, Son E, Shin K, Kim K, Ko DS, Kim YH. Exploring the complex link between obesity and intelligence: Evidence from systematic review, updated meta-analysis, and Mendelian randomization. Obes Rev. 2024 Dec;25(12):e13827. Epub 2024 Sep 3. PMID: 39228076. https://doi.org/10.1111/obr.13827

Wright L, Davies NM, Bann D. The association between cognitive ability and body mass index: A sibling-comparison analysis in four longitudinal studies. PLoS Med. 2023 Apr 13;20(4):e1004207. PMID: 37053134; PMCID: PMC10101525. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004207

2) - on NATO (add https:// before each):
kathleenmccroskey.substack.com/p/elbows-up-didnt-last-long
kathleenmccroskey.substack.com/p/peace-requires-heavy-lifting
kathleenmccroskey.substack.com/p/a-possible-path-to-peace
kathleenmccroskey.substack.com/p/russias-11-point-peace-proposal
kathleenmccroskey.substack.com/p/a-requiem-for-humanity
kathleenmccroskey.substack.com/p/a-requiem-for-humanity
kathleenmccroskey.substack.com/p/on-censorship-in-the-msm
kathleenmccroskey.substack.com/p/what-stands-between-you-and-peace
kathleenmccroskey.substack.com/p/next-stage-of-ww-iii
kathleenmccroskey.substack.com/p/ever-rising-greenhouse-gasses