Seems it was a waste of our time and money. If anything, Canada should be asking the USA to increase their own border security as guns and drugs come into Canada at a much larger scale. And why even have a fentanyl czar etc if none of our actions will stop the tariffs? This was never about the border or drugs but Trump said jump and Canada asked How high?
Canada asked How high?
This isn’t true. Canada re-affirmed that it was going to spend money that had already been allocated and agreed to join a task force that was a Canadian proposal to begin with. The only new thing was appointing a fentanyl “czar,” which is insignificant. Mexico similarly gave up nothing new. Let’s not help Trump spin his failures into victories.
It’s Canada benefiting from the money that was already allocated or was that done in the first place to appease the States?
If it wasn’t for Canada’s benefit then we definately should reallocate it if the tariffs actually happen this time.
Actually, the money we allocated to border control occurred in December 2024, at least a month before Trump threatened tariffs. Trudeau then gave it a fun name (Fentanyl Czar) and Trump accepted that as yielding to his demands. We didn’t budge an inch, but we bought ourselves a month.
And we also bought ourselves the perception of being the “reasonable ones”, with the US being even more blatantly painted as flagrant deal-breakers.
That will be useful as we build new alliances with the rest of the world.
And while they try to make new deals.
And while they try to make new deals.
Who in their right mind would make a deal with a country/president who casually breaks deals whenever they feel like it?
Unless that other party is completely manipulating Trump in the way Putin routinely does…
Who would make a deal with someone who says that was a horrible deal who would have signed it but it was him.
We allocated $1.3b in early December as a response to Trump’s initial tariff threat.
Monday’s 270-page budget document outlined key new expenditures including C$1.3 billion for border agencies over six years, an attempt to avert Trump’s threat of 25% tariffs unless the flow of migrants and fentanyl over the crossing is halted.
We budged.
I don’t think it was the wrong choice, but I don’t think it had the desired effect.
I see the other side of that where we’re upping border control in case Trump decides he wants to invade. That’s not a bad thing.
I mean even if he doesn’t invade, stopping the drugs and guns coming north from the US isn’t necessarily a bad thing
It’s time Canada stopped relying on the United States for anything. If we want to be our own country, not beholden to any other country then we have to be prepared to stand on our own two feet. That means we have to stop thinking we can help every other country in the world and start thinking about how we secure Canada. And it’s going to cost because we need a functional military including the ships that will be required to patrol our coast lines. And that does not come cheap.
We still depend on other countries for trade, however I do agree that we need to start doing more within our country to facilitate trade of finished products rather than parts of products.
