Finishing the week: Comments about the Gathering Storm, plus more Trade War Dispatches

About the Gathering Storm

Everyone is still talking about Carney's trip to the European Parliament, but we're also starting to move on toward what will likely be a more fractious fall parliamentary sitting. 

The Globe and Mail reports:

Prime Minister Mark Carney promised sweeping new economic legislation and a punishing pace this fall as his caucus met in Ottawa ahead of Parliament’s return on Monday....
Mr. Carney said the legislation – which he called the Building Canada Strong Act – is the next phase of his government’s promise to speed up infrastructure and other projects.
...Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon told reporters the bill will include changes to the Canada Labour Code, measures to improve supply chains, and the next steps in the government’s promise to reduce regulatory reviews for all projects to one year...
A promise of faster assessments was one of several Mr. Carney made earlier this week to hundreds of executives at the global investment summit in Toronto. He also announced a major new tax deduction to spur investment and a plan to open up four major airports to private investment...

I suspect some of this will be controversial, and might even be changed before it gets passed. But I would also expect that Carney wants it done and proclaimed before Christmas. 

Before I share other comments, I wanted to expand on a comment of my own, that I made on my post last night.

First, I suspect that I will end up agreeing with some of the criticism we will be hearing in the next month about Carney's proposed legislation - in particular, I don't like the idea that a single minister would have the authority to end a strike, and I don't understand how unions could still retain the right to strike if they are required to submit to binding arbitration before a strike vote could even be taken. 

In particular, I know there are long-standing grievances, like the flight attendants' pay issues, that will only be recognized as problematic and resolved when unions retain the right to strike. 

But second, I am old now - I've seen a lot over the years and I think I have a wider perspective on Canadian issues.

When I was growing up, women couldn't have their own bank accounts. Nobody ever paid any attention to the environmental costs of building anything, much less ever consulted with Indigenous communities about anything. Unions were mainly for the working classes, and "professionals" thought themselves too white-collar for collective bargaining.
In fits and starts, sometimes one step back then two steps forward, Canada has advanced well beyond such outdated beliefs and practices. We're not going back, now or never. 

But these are dangerous times. 

There has never been such a time in my life, when Canadian sovereignty has been so perilous, so endangered by a madman with an army who has neither principles nor prudence.

Yes, all of Canada's issues about labour rights and economic development and consultation do need discussion and yes, they will get dealt with, like we've done for the last 60+ years. 

But maybe not right now.
Not when Canada is facing such a risky time.
Canada is now in The Gathering Storm. We need a leader like Carney with a single-minded focus on our sovereignty.
I believe that everything in Canadian society must now mobilize to this focus too - union legislation, environment, business, development, all of it.
Someday we might be able to argue "Whither Canada?" again - improving labour fairness, economic consultation, greater environmental protection, and so forth.
But we need to get through the next two+ years intact.

Some other comments:

In The Globe and Mail, Andrew Coyne:

... But these are not normal times. Reading between the lines of the statements from various European leaders, there is plainly a readiness to think more creatively, to consider novel forms of co-operation. This is not, after all, merely about trade between the EU’s member countries and Canada, but about their place in the world, as democracies, at a time when the non-democracies are every much on the offensive: Russia, China, and, dismayingly, the United States.
So whatever this involves it is certain to extend beyond trade or the economy, to include defence and security matters – security, in the sense it now has of protecting essential infrastructure, not just from overt sabotage, but from being used as a point of leverage by one hegemon or another. It is noteworthy, for example, to see payments systems listed as one possible area of co-operation.
Canada is already part of the SAFE (Security Action for Europe) procurement arrangement, the first non-European country to join. Ms. von der Leyen, in the same State of the Union speech in which she welcomed Canada as a potential “associate member,” also proposed the creation of a European Security Council that would include, in addition to the EU, Ukraine, Norway, Britain, Canada “and others” – but not the United States.
Who might those others be? In recent days, Australia has said that it would like to pursue an arrangement with Europe similar to what Canada is proposing. Perhaps other democracies may follow. A Canada-European agreement might serve as the template, the test case, for a broader alliance of the democracies – political, economic, military – each sovereign in its own realm but with the reciprocal obligations that go with it, including the obligation to come to each other’s aid if attacked: again, militarily or economically.
We shall see. It is early days. But something enormous is under way. Even as the old world order cracks, a new one is forming. And Canada is at the centre of it.
There is much peril in it, to be sure – Mr. Trump has already warned that he might view a Canada-Europe deal as a “hostile act,” depending on what it contained. Whatever the benefits of diversification, and however speedily we pursue them, we will remain heavily dependent on American trade and American co-operation for some time to come. It is entirely possible that Mr. Trump will ramp up his attacks on us, especially after the midterm elections.
But whatever befalls us, at least let it be said that we did not simply let history wash over us, as helpless spectators to our fate – that we acted to shape events: to build our defences, to expand our options, to improve our odds. This week, it felt as if something in the country had been unleashed, as if that surge in unity and patriotism we have all been feeling over the last few months had finally been channelled into something purposeful.
There is much more to do. But it’s a start.

Economist Paul Krugman

On Wednesday Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, gave a speech affirming the EU’s willingness to move toward making Canada an “associate member.” Nobody quite knows what that would mean, and it might be mostly symbolic. But it would be a kind of declaration, by both Europe and Canada, of reduced dependence on the United States. And the next day Mark Carney, Canada’s Prime Minster, strongly endorsed the idea.
Donald Trump predictably, reacted with rage, calling it a “hostile act,” threatening to cut off all trade with Europe.
And nobody cared.
Last year the EU responded to Trump’s clearly illegal tariffs not by retaliating, but by making a humiliating deal. But at this point Europe has apparently decided to stop fearing Trump.
Canada’s defiance is even more remarkable. Canada’s economy is extremely dependent on the United States both as an export market and as a supplier, while the EU has historically been a vastly less important trading partner....
... So many people both at home and around the world hate Trump. That has, however, been true since quite early in the Trump II administration. What has really changed is the dissipation of fear.
Globally, the most obvious reason nations have stopped fearing Trump is the debacle in Iran. At the start of the Iran war most people imagined that, whatever else one might say about Trump’s America, it had by far the world’s most powerful military. But what we’ve actually seen is one failure after another, as the U.S. military has failed to subdue the Iranian regime, been forced to abandon some of its own bases in the region, and depleted its supplies of munitions. Now America has refused to help Saudi Arabia against the Houthis — perhaps because we no longer have the necessary capabilities.
What about economic power? Trump clearly could do a lot of economic damage to Canada. But the U.S. economy would also suffer from all-out trade war. And while the damage from trade war would be much smaller as a percentage of U.S. GDP than Canadian GDP, Canadians appear to be solidly behind Carney, while Americans, to the extent they even know what is happening, appear by a small plurality to support Canada’s position...br> ...Globally, then, Trump is in exactly the opposite position of where Machiavelli said a prince should be: hated but not feared....

On a side note, it looks like von der Leyen's description of "associate membership" for Canada in the EU was an unexpected terminology for everyone, including Carney


And in other news

So, after eighteen months of lying on the supermarket floor screaming at Denmark, Donald Trump has been handed the 1951 defence agreement, which already gave America bases and the run of Greenland for as long as NATO exists, and which it was using so enthusiastically that it closed sixteen of its seventeen installations there. The grown-ups have simply wrapped the toy he already owned in shiny new paper, told him it was the biggest present anyone has ever had, and he is now running round the garden showing it to everyone. He will certainly make the history books, although I fear not in the chapter he was hoping for.

- Gandalv

Read on Substack

I’m old enough to remember when Trump had a DEAL with Canada. Ten to one this ends with prawn being pulled from US shelves and an AI generated video of Trump suplexing the Little Mermaid.

— Tabatha Southey🇨🇦 (@tabathasouthey.bsky.social) September 18, 2026 at 4:29 PM

Dispatches from the Canada-US Trade War - Some good news posts about Canada's growth

PM Carney spoke to the Liberal caucus on Friday:

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We researched and added six more services to the Unplug America directory this week

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— Tod Maffin 🇨🇦 (@todmaffin.com) September 18, 2026 at 6:54 PM