I’m sorry, but if you want to promote something, at least do it in the right places, and don’t try to spam your message everywhere to try to get support. You’re pretty much making yourself out to be a spammer, and most importantly here, your insensitivity to the topic here has only ruined any chances that I’d look at your project.

I’m adding this as a sub comment cause I think this would be extra points, but I guess it might be interesting for some, if they’ve never really read or thought about it.

But do first note that I’m no expert of governments or foreign trade relations. I’m just an observer.

You might be wondering if tariffs is the only way for governments to protect local industries, and you’re most probably thinking that that shouldn’t be the case. And you’re right. That said though, keep in mind that a tariff is a pretty simple tool for governments to use, and fairly good too: you fork out some money upfront to set up the tariff and all its supporting processes, and you get to earn money for the country. What actually happens is that you’ll tax any imports on the exporter, but what ends up happening is that exporters just add that to their cost and thus increase their prices, so it is typically like a tax on your own citizens. There are exporters who do just sort of eat that cost themselves, but that’s not common afaik.

Another option you could support a local industry is by providing subsidies, which can be done in a myriad of ways: materials, procurement, research, labour, etc, and you can even mix and match some of them. The problem here, though, is that the government has to fork out that money — that’s why it’s a subsidy. The Chinese government loves doing this for any industry that they deem strategic, and they can do so a lot more freely than most democratic countries, because, well, they just don’t have to worry about an election if people aren’t happy with where the investment went. Here in Canada though, people do get mad when subsidies are offered for industries that they don’t like, and that affects the polls.

You could also outright ban the import of certain products from certain countries, but that usually triggers very negative reactions from the affected countries, unless you have a clear law that literally bans the consumption or use of that product; people want to make money after all, and you’re literally making it impossible to do so. Examples of “okay” bans that most countries have over Canada are like cannabis, cause that’s deemed illegal in their country, and Canada doesn’t really have the desire to make those exports. It’s definitely a strong tool though, with potentially negative consequences.

Tariffs are used by countries very commonly and isn’t a Turnip original (yeah I spell his name however I’m feeling like).

The reason why tariffs are used is generally to protect a local industry, typically one that’s weak, either because they’ve fallen behind, or that it’s a new budding industry and fierce competition will just obliterate its chances of even growing.

Think of, say, our EV sector, which is essentially in its infancy. Sectors like these tend to have higher prices on their products because they’ve not reached a critical point and can enjoy the benefits of economies at scale, where they’ve can operate efficiently while mass producing their products; they’re still trying to figure out what works and works well, and so their stocks are limited, which usually means that their means of production is also not as efficient as an established company or sector. Now imagine if we don’t have tariffs against Chinese EVs, which is a mature Chinese industry at this point, and still enjoys massive government benefits to subsidize a lot of its production processes, i.e. their costs are low and they can sell their EVs for cheap. Imagine them just exporting a bunch of EVs to Canada. Without tariffs inflating their prices, most people would probably just buy Chinese EVs cause, well, that’s the economic thing to do individually in these unstable times. Our local EV companies would easily be beaten by cheaper Chinese rivals, especially when our own quality is not even close to competing with Chinese standards, i.e. they can’t make enough of revenue to cover their business operations and ongoing developments, and so the local industry would either die off because people may be discouraged to work in that sector, or it’ll take forever to grow.

If you look around what other sane countries are doing, you’ll see that a lot of them have some level of tariffs in various industries levied against enemies and allies alike, because, well, you, as the government, generally have an incentive to protect your local industries, or people would have a hard time finding jobs and earning money, and if they can’t do that for a long enough, you can kiss your government seat goodbye.

Optics. He can claim to be a victim of “Canadian oppressors” and try to convince more people that there are “Canadian oppressors”.

While it’s true there’s a lot of that, AWS just dominates the cloud, and many of our own tech companies here in Canada use AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, not because they’re cheap, but because they have good uptime guarantees, security guarantees, easily allow you to deploy worldwide and provide fast access to customers almost everywhere (especially major markets like the EU and Asia), and provides companies access to a large talent pool who know how to use these systems. You’d be hard-pressed, as a business owner and/or CTO, to use other options and handle all those downsides yourself, slowing down your ability to do business. The only other potential non-US alternative here is probably Alibaba, but they’re not even close to being considered competition internationally.

Aside from Apple, the big tech companies down south are big and hard to displace not because of what most people know them for, but because of this large arm of software infrastructure that basically serves as the literal backbone of the consumer-side of the Internet.

And for those who think that we can just build that infrastructure ourselves, take note that these companies have been doing this for at least a decade, and spent billions and probably trillions doing this in the US and abroad. AWS itself claims that between 2011 and 2022, it invested $108.9 billion in USD, just within the US alone, and they have data centres in many parts of the world. Not discouraging anyone, but you have to think about where that kind of money has to come from.

You missed an important word for the part about traffic

… can sit in traffic for 30 seconds less than before (temporarily) …

I wouldn’t be surprised if there’d be a slight recovery in tourists at all, especially if the negotiations appear to be somewhat smooth.

This chat with my colleagues about the situation down south and what they’ve been doing with regards to the state just sort of revealed to me that while there are people like us on Lemmy that are repulsed by what’s happening there, there are also people who have closer ties to the US or have frequented the US who try to find ways to tell themselves that they themselves should be fine crossing the border, as long as they get rid of things on themselves that would upset the orange down south. For those with family, I get it. But for those who’re still doing it for leisure, it’s rather clear from the way they’re putting it that they prioritize their own lifestyle over politics, which, tbf, we all have different lines that we draw on that.

Sorry for making a comment that seems impossible to reply to, but I just needed to get that off my chest.

Oh he knew. But he’s also the kind of person who would know how to put up an image when he needs to, and I’m sure he knows how to not prod at tigers (even if it’s just a kitten pretending to be one). There’s some sliminess in him and he knows how to slither his way around things that are potentially dangerous to get what he wants, though at least he doesn’t go around hurting other people.

I have a colleague who said he feels fine going down there for whatever cause he thinks he’ll pass with just how white he looks 🤷 Some people…

Sorry, I can help it…

* smacks roof of car labelled The Left

This bad boy can fit so many punches in it

In that case, okay, I see where you’re coming from with the previous comment. But yeah, it’s always good to question claims of some 4D-chess-like move a government is doing, cause often times, we’d actually know what’s happened, and so would the party on the other side of the table.

I will also say this to clarify, cause I think it seems like we have different definitions: when I said pro-X, I only meant it in the sense that you actively do things that benefit party X. I noticed that it’s used interchangeably with “action benefits party X,” but context doesn’t always make it clear.

And I’m only saying that calling what we see right now a bend of the knee might still be a bit early given that this is a situation that’s still ongoing. If the events are to stop right now, and we essentially get nothing else on top of getting Trump on the negotiating table, then heck ya it’s a capitulation. You call it optimism, I call it seeing it for what it is putting aside my pessimistic view on it. But yes, I agree that we shouldn’t need to do what Carney did.

The questionable bills, and general de-regulation / removal of environmental reviews, are in line with US interests at present, which are backed by tech giants wanting to take more control / have more autonomy. The continued (over) reliance on US tech services is also clearly not in Canada’s best interests, given how the US has been leveraging their near monopolistic status in that realm. Many of our newly elected government officials got in on a promise of standing up to America’s authoritarian bullshit, but once in power have basically complied and made similar authoritarian steps.

This is a very charged take of Bill C-5 and it makes it hard to agree or disagree. Might just be a me-thing, but anytime people use very charged words or takes, I just have the tendency to retort, because while they aren’t possibilities you can disprove, there’s also nothing to prove them. We can entertain the possibility, but I do wonder if we’d just be focusing on the wrong problem and make constructive conversations impossible to make.

Uhh… Did you reply to the right person/comment? I don’t see how your comment connects to mine here. But I’ll reply to your comment anyway.

I don’t disagree with your comment, but I am definitely a bit more hesitant to label Carney as anything (the word “neoliberal” has so many competing definitions it’s essentially a nothing-burger with only some bad flavour attached to it to make it a punching bag by all sides these days). First off, it’s pretty clear that Trump’s moves are done in favour of the US tech oligarchs, that we can agree on.

Carney’s recent moves have basically burnt through his political capital extremely quickly, though I can’t say all of them align with or benefit the US, not even the pipelines he’s been eager to build, especially cause most of the O&G companies in Alberta are mostly owned by foreign companies (source), not necessarily all by the US. And Carney’s government hasn’t done that much with about 2 months in, but none of them have been pro-international trade per se. Cutting the carbon tax is definitely pro-business but it was done more so to appease the right more broadly than just businesses, though I guess if you consider the fact that O&G companies are mostly foreign-owned, then you might say it’s pro-international-trade, but since we’ve barely decarbonized our economy and society by much (doesn’t help that Ontario and Alberta have such strong conservative provincial governments), and the costs are passed onto consumers anyway (though consumers get that rebate), cutting the carbon tax does essentially nothing for businesses at the expense of consumers. Internal trade barriers is, well, internal, and its consequences can be a toss up for businesses in general: those with the resources to operate across provinces may be able to give smaller players a hard time.

All-in-all, I haven’t seen their other moves as being obtusely against Canadian interests, even if we don’t agree with all of them (eg Bill C-5 and Bill C-2), and even if they hurt Canadians in the long run. That said, the earlier border bill is basically an appeasement, given that it was clearly a cop out issue by Trump. This cutting of the Digital Services Tax is another instance of Carney’s government giving up on a policy that is in the country’s interest to try gain what they think is also in the country’s interest with the US, and ostensibly so. So that’s two, but we’ll still need at least a few more of such instances to see if Carney’s gov is pro-US, cause insofar, these were done to get Trump onto the negotiating table by hurting Canadians a little (privacy on the border bill, and putting back on the threat to our media and online entertainment industry). I would hope we’d actually get something given that the sacrifices have been made, and I’d rather we don’t do what Carney did, but we can’t disregard the fact that there’s a potential gain to be made, even if we don’t like how things are going down, and don’t like how we’re negotiating with a wannabe dictator. We haven’t gotten anything out of it though, so patience with Carney is going to run thin.

And let’s not even talk about PP. Just because he’s not elected and we didn’t immediately get Musk-ed, doesn’t necessarily make me feel any better with how most of Carney’s economic moves have been more conservative than what I think is necessary. For example, he said we should have a good energy mix, but he’s yet to announce or even mention any investment or developments in green energy, or anything that would contribute to a good off-ramp for O&G companies (even if we don’t think they deserve it) and making sure we have a healthy amount of green energy generation, and thus only making it more and more necessary to more extreme measures if we want to save our and our children’s future.

I’m gonna need some citations or sources for that.

AFAIK, the service tax was not “put in place ages ago”. It was put in force in June 2024, literally last year, and the first payments were expected literally yesterday, on June 30th, 2025. It’s retroactive, but still only goes back to 2022, which isn’t “ages ago”. Source

And what’s this wheat market steal you’re talking about?

Fuck this imperialistic, purely exploitative, and victim-seeking, almost Nazi take.

1. First Nations are part of Canada and they have a say in this country’s future.
2. Prosperity and resource utilization do not have to be achieved by closing the door on discussions that need to be had.
3. This bill is blatantly and clearly undemocratic, and is a threat that can throw this country into the similar shit show that we see down south. If you’re happy to see it passed, I don’t know what to say about you.

I’m hoping this is just your bad take and not trying to parrot some shit rhetoric that’s been coming out of certain talk figures and some less reputable users around here.

It’s not that simple though. People who live in rural areas already have resources that they trust, and that’s outside of the Internet, and with their local communities, churches or not. The way we, as humans, look at information is highly dependent on what we already know, with all our biases and know-hows shaped by our past experiences. And as much as people on Lemmy think it’s easy, knowing how to lookup the Internet is a skill: just work with someone who doesn’t use the Internet much, and you’ll see how some amount of investigative skill and patience is needed, and it’s not just a “ask whatever you want into the search bar” kind of deal. Even we don’t just do that: the Internet has a ton of trashy websites that can’t be trusted, and we have to learn how to filter those out.

It’s easy to just say that these people are gullible, but I see their gullibility as something that is shaped by people with malicious intents. Keep the education system badly funded or ran by likeminded people, add that with a community that seems to be doing well without outside knowledge, and you have an environment that’ll churn out people who are likely to believe whatever their circle of people peddles to them, especially if they’ve created an environment where you don’t trust anyone from the out group.

This whole thing is just sad to read, though I think I’m rather naive to reasons why the ideas of separatism was even there in the first place, if not just because some small group of powerful individuals wanted impunity when it comes to resource extraction, and, over the years, gained governmental powers and installed a useful and twisted mouthpiece as their their Premier, and started using recent alt-right tactics to look for any points of dissatisfaction turn that into a bludgeon against Ottawa.

I feel sorry for rural Albertans cause their lives and worldview have been shaped to have little to no options but what O&G execs and extreme religious leaders want.

That’s not just an anti-trans playbook. That’s THE playbook used by many politicians around the world today to garner support while breaking their political opponents’: pick on small issues that target some minority groups, talk about them as if they’re rampant, just so that they can get enough of a majority behind them so that they can push their own agenda.

Could we share this with MPs or even Carney so that they’d see this? Cause I really wish they can see this to know that this is what we’re facing, and we really hope they’ll do the right thing. I’m probably just trying to feel hopeful though.

If more people can actually care about the lives of others, the problems that our world and humanity face right now would’ve been much easier to solve.

Recent news all really just make me wonder if we just voted the Conservatives into power.