So: Canada, eh.

Present view. Little flag on our swim dock.

Hey, Canada Day.

People always say their country is the best country in the world. Canadians, too.

But I don’t know if that is true. I haven’t been to every country in the world – and I don’t think there’s anyone else who has, either.

So we don’t know. Belize could be the best country in the world. Who knows.

Canada is a good country, but – like the others – imperfect. We pollute, we waste, we do bad things. We have children living in the streets, we have children who go to bed hungry.

Our ongoing indifference to those who were here first is a disgrace. As Dad to a smart indigenous girl, I believe that we will never be great until we remedy that. We will never be a great country – or perhaps even a country – until we pay the debt we owe First Nations.

So, we are not great. We are okay. We are not bad. When we compare ourselves to the alternatives – like, say, America, which is anything but great, now, and for obvious reasons – we are better than those alternatives.

Mostly, we are a work in progress. We are on the way.

So, I will acknowledge this birthday, this anniversary, in the most Canadian of ways – half-heartedly. Fist up, halfway. Quietly.

We are not great. We are not perfect. But we are better than many of the alternatives.

Because we’ve been to a lot of the alternatives, and all of us keep coming back to this patch of rock and ice and dirt.

Happy you-know-what, eh.


The day Trump handed power to China

Full story here.

Snippet:

These investors, trade experts and government officials are still stunned by an event that got next to no attention in the U.S. but was an earthquake out here — and a gift that will keep on giving America’s allies pain and China gain for years to come. That was Trump’s decision to tear up the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free-trade deal in his first week in office — clearly without having read it or understanding its vast geo-economic implications.

(Trump was so ignorant about TPP that when he was asked about it in a campaign debate in November 2015 he suggested that China was part of it, which it very much is not.)
Trump simply threw away the single most valuable tool America had for shaping the geo-economic future of the region our way and for pressuring China to open its markets. Trump is now trying to negotiate trade openings with China alone — as opposed to negotiating with China as the head of a 12-nation TPP trading bloc that was based on U.S. values and interests and that controlled 40 percent of the global economy.
It is hard to think of anything more stupid. And China’s trade hard-liners are surely laughing in their sleeves.


Trump: making America hated again

Just extraordinary findings by the Pew people. 

Someone said to me last night: “I hate America.” I was astonished this person, in particular, would say such a thing. 

Apparently they’re not alone.