Tag: tariffs

Crank

Easter weekend. The tourists and second home owners from Alberta are running amuck. CBC says money is tight, the US is going to swallow us up whole, but you wouldn’t know it looking at these folks. 

The Flickers and Starlings are fighting over the holes in trees to build nests. The Ospreys are back working on their home beside our old house. They seem to be the only commuting second home owners I have any use for. A Bald Eagle is perched over the river below the bridge an eye out for easy prey. They better do it quick before the river is covered in white bloated tourists.

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The town as we turn into a small city stinks. The sewage lagoons are not working again, the bacteria having died. A common problem as we outgrow our infrastructure. The sewage will get flushed into Toby Creek that will soon start to back up into Lake Windermere. Invermere officials thinking it is long gone flowing downstream once in the creek, while they allocate funds to grow business and entice more second home and short term rental investment. I haven’t met one small town politician who didn’t think it is money that makes the world go round. 

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The US Whitehouse continues to implement and sustain tariffs. It is difficult to know their reasons, they say it is to bring manufacturing back to it’s home soil. But what if it does what economists say it will and make everything too expensive to buy? Would that be such a bad thing. I think our appetites could use being curbed. That is probable not the intention of the US. Sooner or later though we are going to have to slow consumption. Fill these big second homes, that are only lived in a couple months a year, with people who need housing. Wouldn’t that be something.

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Canada is in the throes of a federal election. In our riding it will be an easy lay up for the incumbent, Rob Morrison of the Conservative Party. Mr. Morrison was parachuted into the riding in 2019 to challenge the hapless NDP candidate, Wayne Stetski a true dullard. It has been a lucrative and easy position for Mr. Morrison. One that he can keep doing for as long as he chooses.

The Conservative Party of Canada, under the leadership of Pierre Poilievre, looked like it would hop, skip and jump over the listless Trudeau into power. But not so fast, with the US in the state it is. All of a sudden conservatism doesn’t look as sweet to Canadians.

The CBC is firmly behind The Liberals and Mark Carney. So much for impartiality in media. And why not, their bloated budget is on the line as Mr. Poilievre threatens to cut their funding if elected. The CBC is fighting for their life even if it means getting behind Mr. Carney, a high minded banker who has never garnered one vote from the Canadian electorate.

The theme is we need someone to stand up to Donald Trump in the Whitehouse and their desire to make Canada the 51st state. Something first said, as a barb to Trudeau, that didn’t even dignify a response has now become our main election issue, ramped up by social and mainstream media.

It is with this in mind that Poilievre and Carney are offered up as saviours. Like most politicians, two guys I wouldn’t trust to lead me across the street.

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Behind Swansea, down on the creek, the rain kept up. A few buntings topped the trees. Deadfalls snapped half way up blocked Novembers once clear path. My pant legs soaked through keeping up with Willow.

so it goes

The United States decided to throw the North American Free Trade Agreement out the window and impose tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods.

This could mean interesting and hard times ahead. The Canadian economy is very dependent on selling to the United States. Consider this a wake up call for Canada to expand its customer base. The question will be if we as citizens are prepared for the economic pain that may mean. We have had all our eggs in one basket for a long time.

It also may be advantageous for Canada to expand it’s own manufacturing of products. Something we have always been poor at, instead happy to export raw resources elsewhere to be processed.

Regardless, nothing is going to happen overnight, except, of course, the tariffs.

The Whitehouse says the tariffs are necessary in Canada due to fentanyl and people entering the United States through the northern border. Although the problem is minuscule compared to the southern border it doesn’t mean we can’t do better, and we will and have put in measures to do so.

The underlining truth is the White House may see tariffs as a way to pay down their massive deficit. Fentanyl and people entering the United States illegally probably has nothing to do with implementing tariffs. Just as weapons of mass destruction had nothing to do with Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld justifying invading Iraq.

Canadians may have to exercise our own, often understated yet proven, resilience and patriotism to weather the coming storm.

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AND speaking of the weather! Our mild winter continues. A bit of blowing snow. Swans in the wetlands seem early to arrive, maybe they are holdouts. The clouds continue to push down. It would be nice to see some blue sky this season.