*Paid subscribers can find the ad-free version of the episode at the bottom of this article.*
On Wednesday the New York Times ran a long interview with Mark Carney, done while he was in New York for the UN General Assembly. The reporter pressed him on Trump's 51st state talk, and Carney said that you have a responsibility in these roles to look at extreme tail risk. According to Carney, American military action against Canada is not a base case, but it would be irresponsible not to prepare for it. He called it risk management. By Thursday morning the Canadian headlines said the Prime Minister had prepared for a U.S. invasion. By Thursday afternoon David McGuinty was at the cabinet door explaining that every military studies scenarios like this.
The Canadian press knew what it was doing when it ran the answer as a war footing. Every time a headline like that lands, Liberal approval ticks up and the wartime story lives another cycle. Although, some conservative voices take the bait and condemn Carney for saying it. Instead, the narrative should be about the media lying about something reasonable.
Then there is the question of why people hold on. Some readers will accept that the press pulled one on them. Others won’t, and the reason is not stupidity. A story like the invasion scare gives an angry person a place to put the anger.
Meanwhile, Ursula von der Leyen told the European Parliament she wants Canada to be the first associate member of the EU. Carney answered that Canada does not want to join and that Parliament will vote on whatever this becomes. Trump called it laughable. A week later Carney welcomed To Lam, who runs both the Vietnamese state and its Communist Party, and Vietnam upgraded Canada to a strategic partner. Ottawa says it must diversify away from America because Trump is an authoritarian, then shakes hands with actual communists. The words stop meaning anything at that point.
The third story is the FBI. The CBC circulated a memo reminding staff not to call 9/11 terrorism without attributing the word to an official. Kash Patel posted that any Canadian agency that failed to reject the memo would have no friend at the Bureau, and the RCMP got frozen out. Jonathan sees all of this as one alliance, Democrats and Liberals working the same side of the board, with Canada as a lever in the midterms rather than a country with its own interests.
Every one of these stories is loud in the headline and thin in the outcome, whether it is an invasion that is not coming, a membership that does not exist, or partnerships with countries whose trade with us rounds to zero. What is real is the propaganda machine that turns each of them into approval points.
Below, for paid subscribers, we get into Bill C-39 and what it means when a government reserves the power to end strikes in the “national interest”.
Listen to The Blendr Report EP176 on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
