Now what?

So, after 17 months of "Elbows Up" and "I'm the only guy who can deal with Trump", it's basically "Tits Up" at this point.

Carney's current negotiating position.

Carney has been an abject failure.  Frankly, I think he took a hissy fit when J.D. Vance's private hot mike comments were leaked.  Vance said Carney thought he could "out tough" Trump.  He laughed at him, talking about how he puffed himself up and tried to get the tariffs lifted.

Carney's position was basically a stupid one.  He said it was "All tariffs lifted, or no deal."  As I have said before, that was a stupid position because it was impossible.  Now Greer is blaming Canada and Carney is blaming the U.S.  But when Carney heard Vance mocking him, he couldn't take it.  Carney's problem is he has 'Duck's disease':  His ar-e is basically too close to the ground, rendering him overly-sensitive.

The other problem was while he was vacationing in Tuscany with Brookfield CEO Bruce Flatt, negotiations were at their most fraught,.  Carney very unwisely chose to stay in his Italian villa.

So dumb.

But Trump also needs a history lesson.  He has apparently forgotten the 'Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act', of 1930, which put huge tariffs on a whole range of things.  How long did it take for those tariffs to be lifted?  Sixty years!  That Act, which triggered a destructive global trade war, only raised tariffs 20 percent, yet still caused international trade to collapse and deepened the economic crisis.

We're in much worse shape, with 50 percent tariffs on a whole range of goods and services.  Will all the Liberals still drinking Karney Koolaid wake up?  I doubt it.

  

Same old same old

With apologies to my status friends, I have to comment on a column by Joe Dion, CEO of the Western Indigenous Pipeline Group, in which he claims natives are all for pipelines.  They just was the money that comes out of them.

Mr. Dion claims that the federal government has blocked his group from purchasing any shares in the new pipeline being proposed for the Trans Mountain corridor, while allowing Pembina a defined stake in the line.  

Frankly, I think I know why.  The feds know, from experience, that any partnership with the Indigenous communities along the line will be fraught.  Pembina, anxious to make money, will not pose such a threat, meaning they will cooperate to ensure the line is expedited every inch along the way.

"Reconciliation is not measured in news releases and memoranda," Dion writes.  "It is measured in ownership, in shared governance and in shared wealth reaching our communities."

And therein lies the rub.  Unlike Pembina, whose revenues and profits depend entirely on the pipeline's completion, Indigenous funding is completely separate.  They get their money regardless.

Pipelines support the entire country.  Those opposed need to wake up to that fact.

"Consultation" does not mean approval or veto.  It means "consultation".  But the Indigenous have never seen it that way.  I penned the following letter to 'The Globe and Mail' the other day, knowing it would not be published.  So far, it hasn't been:

"Dear Editor,

"Mr. Dion says that the "Indigenous groups have been ready to invest in pipeline assets for years."  As an observer, it seems to me that the starting position of most Indigenous consultations is usually vocal and flamboyant public opposition. 

"To fully realize Canada's potential, we need to get our vast resources out of the ground and into the markets that want to buy them.  Yes, there have been few companies waiting to start building, but I believe this is because experience tells them negotiations will be protracted, difficult and may, or may not, result in success. 

"Added to this is the prime minister's toothless MOU, which belies his true position as basically anti-pipeline.  That's why nothing has been accomplished on this file since he took office.  It would wonderful if we could finally get a pipeline built, but I'm not holding my breath.

"Nancy Marley-Clarke"

__________________

Cindy Woodhouse-Nepinak, AFN chief, has never met a sacred headdress she doesn't love to don at a podium, while trashing every agreement anyone anywhere is trying to hammer out.  Do you think this would be any different?  

Dion concludes by saying, "Before a single metre of new pipe is laid in our corridor (just for the record, it's not your corridor.  It is all Crown Land, given for Indigenous use, but not ownership), close the deal on the pipeline already there.  We are a prepared, willing and capable Indigenous partner, waiting to negotiate a meaningful interest in Trans Mountain with real governance rights for both sides.

"The federal government has invited investors from around the world to consider buying into Canadian resource and infrastructure assets, but they are not even engaging with Indigenous groups that have been ready to invest for years."

To me it's clear why.  It'd never end.

Booze

Carney has asked the premiers to stock US booze again.  I agree with this move, but Ford, Holt and Fréchette are resisting.  That's just dumb.  The Quebec premier has had her precious supply management scam protected, so the least she could do is put a little Jack Daniels on the odd shelf or two.

This would be a good move and show some good will.

As for Susan Holt, she's always struck me as just dim.  Ford, on the other hand, is a diehard blowhard, prone to gimmicky press conferences and running dumb ads in the US that set us back months, so I doubt he will immediately comply.  However, he will be forced to at some point; too much money at stake.

The customer, however, is free not to buy any American hooch.  People opposed can certainly stick to Canadian Rye and shitty wine.  Go ahead, make your point.  I personally don't care because I am a "cheap drunk", as the saying goes.  I shop by price -- although I draw the line at Smirnoff.

As for the "done" deal, as I understand it, the auto sector is still a sticking point.  If the late, great Bob White were still around, I predict he'd have got it done.  He was the head of the UAW and the CLC in the eighties and a charmer to the back teeth.  

I ran into him in a bar back in 1984, when I was running federal communications for EXPO '86 and had to travel all over Canada promoting the fair.  Can't remember which city we were in, but I was sitting with my colleague, Angèle, going over strategy before a meeting the next morning and who was sitting at the next table?  Bob White and a couple of his boys.  We got to chatting and it was clear they wanted us to join them.  Bob was the instigator and kept chatting away.  "Why don't you girls (I was 37 at the time, so still technically "young-ish") join us," he kept saying, as he tried to buy us drinks.  We politely refused, but it was clear he had had much success in the charming lounge lizard department.

The charming Mr. White in action.

So, yes, I think Bob could have played a pivotal role in the auto negotiations currently running into sticking point after dead end.  I mean, the bulky, lumbering, ungainly Dominic Leblanc isn't a patch on Mr. White when it comes to mounting a charm offensive camouflaging a tough position.  And as for Janice Charette?  Her dreadful appearance speaks for itself.

Ah yes, those EXPO days were some of the most fun I had during my entire career.

It's clear

Mark Carney does not want a trade deal with the U.S.  If he did, he would never have put Janice Charette and Dominic Leblanc in charge.

Janice, or as I call her "Miss Piggy" because she looks like that character, and Dominic, or "Ernie", the guy who has spent 18 months getting absolutely nothing accomplished, are not going to get anything done because Trump can't stand either of them.  With him, everything is personal, which is why he loathes Carney.

Sorry, but does she not resemble Miss Piggy?  

I know I can be a mean b-tch, but why would you send someone who looks like that to negotiate the biggest trade deal in Canadian history?  I mean, why?  With that hair, she looks like an unprofessional slob.

And as for "Ernie", he's primarily a hail-fellow-well-met-back-slapper.  Practically lives in Washington and can't get it done.  Their latest position is they want all current tariffs lifted and the 50% proposed halted.

Our man Ernie in Washington.

That's not a negotiating position, it's an ultimatum.  Naturally, Jamieson Greer has completely rejected it.  And why wouldn't he?  Negotiating is give and take and they're giving nothing.  Why not put American liquor back on the shelves?  That would be a great start and benefit both American and Canadians, but so far Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee have dug in and accomplished crickets.

In the end, it doesn't matter what these two "negotiate".  Trump will do whatever he wants.  Or not.

The biggie that the U.S. objects to is our ridiculous supply management system, which artificially keeps egg and dairy prices high and bars American competition in those two sectors.  Yesterday, Premier Fréchette doubled down on Quebec's position that this policy cannot be touched.

So, as I say, Carney -- currently languishing in dry dock in Italy -- doesn't want a deal. 

Nothing's changed

For all the talk about economic diversification, Canada still relies on its basic resources.  Alberta, for example, just announced its $7 billion deficit will now poof into a $9.7 billion surplus thanks to an increase in the price of oil.

So much for diversification.  We still rely solely on that stuff under our feet -- and so does the rest of the country.  What a way to run a railroad!

___________________

Oh, I almost forgot.  "Miss Havisham" reared her ugly head this morning.  While I was at the pool, B's ex called to revisit what had happened 46 yeas ago.  Forty-Six years!!!!!  She went on about how Nancy had lost a pair of then six-year-old Sarah's socks.  Sarah is now 52.  

Since their divorce, this person has remained mired and stuck in the past, like 'Great Expectations' Miss Havisham.  There she sits in her home (paid for by us), mulling over perceived slights and surrounded by cobwebs, decaying furniture and ratty Christmas decorations.

B's ex, sitting with her cobwebs.

In grade eight, our home room teacher, the peerless Miss Anderson, read a few chapters of 'Great Expectations' every Friday afternoon.  I was riveted and it all came back when the ex called this morning to cry about trivial episodes from 46 years ago.  She obviously needs psychiatric help, but, of course, will never seek it.

B told her to "f-ck off" and she replied, "How dare you speak to me like that!" Before he hung up, she announced triumphantly that she had told everyone at the Gatineau Fish & Game Club -- where B had been the president and where we had vacationed as a blended family of six for 25 years -- that she was, "The original Mrs. Marley-Clarke; the other one doesn't count."  They had been married for nine years.  B's daughter, a shameless non-member, has been bringing her up there for the past seven years on the back of a member's privilege and that's how the ex introduces herself.  

Get an effing life!

Yep, folks, she's insane.  Just put her number on call block.  I thought we had been rid of her decades ago, but no, she re-appears like a demon that never goes away. 

 

Did you know....

....where the chairman of Brookfield lives, the guy who replaced Carney as CEO when he ran for Liberal leader?  Did you know where that guy, Bruce Flatt, lives?  Why, he lives in luxury in Tuscany!

Gee, what a coincidence!  Imagine, they just happen to be vacationing together!  Isn't that amazing?!

The journalist in me always gets her man, so I dug into this to find out why Carney chose Tuscany and not Harrington Lake, the prime minister's official summer residence, renovated at a cost to the beleaguered taxpayer, standing in line at the local food bank, to the tune of $11.7 million!

Tuscany, the PM's vacation paradise.

Of course, the lazy media did not look into this.  In fact, they questioned nothing and dug into nothing.  Konrad von Finkenstein, the "Ethics" commissioner, actually approved this.  Hey, Konrad, you work for us, not the PM.  To the Canadian media I say, hang your collective heads in shame, you slothful journalists.  You didn't even bother pulling back the curtain.  But I was trained by the very best at Maclean Hunter in Toronto and that's why I did.

That's the kind of sneaky guy Carney is.  I had an inkling of this a number of years ago, when B was VP of the Rockcliffe Tennis Club.  Knowing every member, B spotted a couple of guys playing who he knew were not members.  One was Pinchas Zukerman and the other?  Mark Carney.

"You have 15 minutes to clear off this court," said B.  Otherwise I will call the police.  "Well, we're friends of a friend who is a member," they offered.  "Sorry, that's not how we operate at this club," B rejoined.  "You have to be with the member and pay the fee, or you have to be a member, so please clear off."

Finally, they did.  So, as I said, this is the kind of guy Carney is:  An entitled toff who skirts any rule he encounters.

So, all you sheep who continue to believe in the guy who cannot get a deal with the U.S., who traipses off on vacation when Trump's crippling tariffs are about to drop and the country is on fire, give your heads a shake.  Pull off the blinkers and face what Canada has become.

I feel like crying.  

  

  

Not interested

So, economic genius Mark Carney is, "Not interested in a narrow trade deal."  He wants the whole enchilada.  He has drawn a line in the sand as trade talks heat up, according to an article in 'The Globe and Mail'.

What a stupid way to negotiate.  

"We're not interested in a very targeted deal without connections to other sectors," he added.  "We want to address autos, steel, aluminum and forest products.  Will we get that by August 19th?  We'll see.  But we want to have pathways in order to get that."

What does that even mean?  Pathways?  To where?  For what?  What it actually means is that he knows he can't get sector-specific deals, so pretends he doesn't want them.  "I hope so," was all the incompetent Dominic Leblanc could muster, when asked if an agreement were possible by August 19.  Remember when the deadline was July 1st, 2025!?  Ya, blew right through that pipe dream.

Carney's "plan".  Pathetic.

What a stupid way to "negotiate".  As I have said, "hope" and "we'll see" are not strategies.  They are blatant admissions of defeat.  And just to drive home reality, Trump called Carney "nasty" five times in a speech in Las Vegas.

Carney's "plan" has gone from "elbows up" to "knees down and pockets picked".  He needs to get real and take sector-specific deals where he can because he's never going to get everything lifted -- especially by taunting and insulting Trump at every opportunity.  Remember when Carney said, "Who cares?" when asked about trade talks.  Ya, that guy.

Why do so many people still support him?  He wears nothing but 'The Emperor's New Clothes'!  

Even Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, said he wants to make interim deals with Canada, so why will Carney not do so?  As I said, because he can't.  He has failed dramatically and is now shrugging his way out of it.

We're so effed with this dunce.