Josh MQ

[James E. Thorne @DrJStrategy]

Canada: Crying Over Spilt Milk in a Self‑Inflicted Stagnation

Canada’s elite have spent a quarter‑century turning a rich, opportunity‑dense economy into a slow‑growth, over‑levered cul‑de‑sac, and they still insist nothing is structurally wrong. There is no sense crying over spilt milk about past mistakes when the architects of this stagnation are still in charge and still in denial.

Canada did not just drift into secular stagnation; it embraced a kind of virtue socialism and an industrial policy anchored on climate change targets rather than productive capacity, competitiveness, or growth. An economy built on world‑class natural resources, strategic geography, and human capital has been deliberately downgraded into a housing‑addicted, low‑productivity balance sheet recession risk, and the people who did it still show up on panels calling this “resilience.”

For years, Canada’s comparative advantages in energy, resources, and industrial capacity were something to apologize for, regulate to death, or tax into oblivion, while policy and capital chased the illusion that you could mortgage and virtue‑signal your way to prosperity. The result is a country flirting with a liquidity trap, where even lower rates may barely move a real economy suffocated by over‑priced assets, under‑built productive capital, and households too damaged to borrow again.

The real scandal is not that Canada faces secular stagnation; it is that the elite engineered it, denied it, wrapped it in climate rhetoric, and now blame external shocks while the data scream that this is a made‑in‑Canada crisis.

To be clear, Canada’s problems are not the result of President Trump!

If Canada’s elite will not finally admit that decades of attacking its own strengths, worshipping its own bubbles, and treating industrial policy as a morality play have left the country one downturn away from a full balance sheet recession, then they are not guardians of the national interest, they are custodians of decline, and at this point, there really is no sense crying over spilt milk, only over the refusal to fix the mess they made.

[James E. Thorne @DrJStrategy]

For the record.

For Canadians wondering how we ended up here, this clip says it all decades of self-inflicted decline. Canada chose ideology over pragmatism, trading prosperity for empty virtue signals.

A nation blessed with world-class resources convinced itself that using them would be immoral, and now wonders why its standard of living is collapsing.

This isn’t bad luck, and it isn’t Trump’s fault.

Yet we still cling to the same delusions — “elbows up!” and all as if sloganeering could substitute for policy. Bay Street actually thinks the Bank of Canada’s next move is a rate hike, proving that even our financial class doesn’t get it.

This won’t turn around quickly. The United States has pivoted, America First, productive capital, and built its industrial policy around growth and competitiveness; the world is changing and Canada is stuck in the past.

Canada built its industrial policy around climate sermons. The result? A gutted economy, eroding living standards, and a country that still refuses to face reality.

[@freedomtoffend.com @likeDavyWatts]

Carney is running the exact same strategy that won him the last election: poke Trump, insult the U.S., inflame nationalism, and flood the airwaves with “Canada can lead the world” fantasy talk. It’s branding, not governing.

He promised interprovincial trade fixed by summer 2025. Nothing. No pipelines. No growth breakthrough. No economic renaissance. Just speeches and packaging.

He was elected to “get a deal done” with Trump. That’s failed. So now it’s elbows up, anti-Americanism, and anyone who doesn’t vote Liberal is smeared as “Maple MAGA.”

Canada’s economy is 1/11th the size of the U.S. Our per capita GDP is far lower. Unemployment higher. Overall wealth declining. Yet voters are told we’re a rising superpower.

And this 70% “buy Canadian” military push — is it about military effectiveness? Or jobs and votes? If equipment costs 2–3x more, takes longer, and is inferior, is that patriotism — or politics?

Carney’s gift is self-branding and never overestimating voter gullibility. If Conservatives can’t prevent Trump from overreacting to the bait, Carney will ride that straight into another win.

The speech itself? Internally contradictory, misusing Thucydides, and absurdly comparing Western trade alliances to Soviet tyranny. It’s theatrical nationalism, not strategy.

Canadians keep buying the packaging without opening the box.

@MarkJCarney @PierrePoilievre @JustinTrudeau @CPC_HQ @liberal_party @POTUS @realDonaldTrump @CBCNews @CTVNews #cdnpoli #ElbowsUp #CanadaUS #cdnecon

Here is an adult analysis of the absurd Carney speech. But sadly media in Canada are children. https://t.co/QbNkO9CD7f

[James E. Thorne @DrJStrategy]

Mark Carney boasts that Canada has “the most educated workforce in the world,” but that claim has become a parody of itself. What passes for education today is little more than mass credentialing and ideological indoctrination. The managerial class, overflowing with degrees but barren of competence, preaches climate virtue while productivity, state capacity, and living standards collapse.

Canada’s bureaucracy has swollen into a self-reinforcing progressive monoculture obsessed with “SWOT analyses,” diversity audits, and climate signaling. Ottawa now models hypothetical U.S. invasions and publishes net-zero transition memos while failing to build pipelines, fix housing, or deliver basic services. The country’s economic sovereignty is slipping away, suffocated by its own “educated” overseers.

The cult of climate policy has become the ultimate refuge for a failed governing class. Bureaucrats and academics chant the language of decarbonization and “climate justice” to obscure their own incapacity to produce or manage anything concrete. The economy stagnates under the weight of green bureaucracy, yet the managerial elite congratulates itself for moral superiority.

A recent poll shows how deeply this moral delusion has seeped into the national psyche: Canadians now view the United States as more dangerous than China or Russia. That’s not education, it’s indoctrination. The average citizen blames Donald Trump for the failures of their own government, conditioned by a university and media ecosystem that worships climate alarmism and despises economic reality. Canada’s decline is no mystery, it’s what happens when a society mistakes ideology for intelligence and compliance for virtue.

[Nick @nickcammarata]

the guy who directly controls the world economy told me it was a good time to buy and I didn’t buy

[Inverse Cramer @CramerTracker]

The plan? We destroy $10T of market capitalization to fix a $1T trade deficit

[John Pasalis @JohnPasalis]

Canada has built an economy where the best way to get rich isn’t to invent, create, or build anything

It’s to own houses and wait for prices to rise

If we want a more dynamic, prosperous economy

We need a system that channels investment into productive sectors—innovation, entrepreneurship, and industry

Rather than unproductive, extractive investments like owning houses

[Kevin Pacitti 🇨🇦🇮🇹🇬🇧 @kpac_15]

Ian Lee at Carleton Uni schooling CBC viewers of retaliatory tariffs.
‘They’re going to be very destructive for 🇨🇦.
100 billion 🇨🇦 dollars on a 25-30 trillion dollar 🇺🇸 economy is like finding a loonie on the sidewalk and thinking you’ve made it rich.’

[Steve Saretsky @SteveSaretsky]

Boomers going to sacrifice the younger generation one last time…

[Bill Simmons @BillSimmons]

You had me at “3 fights in 9 seconds”

[Michael Thomlinson @miket136]

BOOM - there goes the spring election, here come a $100billion + deficit for 2025.

Expect the dollar below 50 cents and double digit interest rates by this time next year.

[Pierre Poilievre @PierrePoilievre]

Nothing has changed.

Every Liberal MP and Leadership contender supported EVERYTHING Trudeau did for 9 years, and now they want to trick voters by swapping in another Liberal face to keep ripping off Canadians for another 4 years, just like Justin.

The only way to fix what Liberals broke is a carbon tax election to elect common sense Conservatives who will bring home Canada's promise: https://t.co/GHnhi3SjMe

[Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong]

If you bought $100 of Bitcoin when Coinbase was founded in June 2012, it would now be worth about $1,500,000.

If you kept the $100 USD you'd only be able to purchase about $73 worth of goods today.

Bitcoin is the best performing asset of the last 12 years, and it's still early days.

Every government, especially those looking to create a hedge against inflation, should create a Bitcoin strategic reserve.

Happy Bitcoin $100k day.

[Kevin Vuong 🇨🇦 @KevinVuongxMP]

Having Rolex-owning, bespoke 3-piece suit wearing, Maserati-driving @theJagmeetSingh as NDP leader is like a carnivore leading a vegan party or an animal abuser leading the SPCA.

[Autism Capital 🧩 @AutismCapital]

🚨Peter Thiel on Elon's shift to the right:

"I've known Elon since 2000, almost 25 years. For the first 20 years he was left of center. Tesla was a clean energy electric car company. Republicans were the people who didn't believe in climate change. He was naturally more comfortable in deep blue Democratic California. At some point Elon shifted and part of it is just that the intellectual straight jacket is not what he signed up for. Even if you agree 80%, it's not enough for the left. You need to be 100%.

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

Canada, led by "Liberal" Party leader Justin Trudeau, pivoted to the left much harder than the US. They were a Rorschach test for "progressive" ideals: carbon taxes, DEI, censorship, open immigration.

Here is the report card of that progress.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

The truth will set you free

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

If the election outcome is as I expected, it should cause the large minority of the country who supported @KamalaHarris and predicted her victory to begin to question their sources of truth.

Half the country has believed that @X is filled with mis- and disinformation, and that they could only therefore rely on The NY Times, MSNBC, CNN and other mainstream media for their news. And they did.

If, however, you have been active on @X for the last year, you have known the truth days, weeks and often months before the facts appear in the MSM.

The MSM excerpted, clipped and cut to defame @realDonaldTrump while claiming that @JoeBiden was fit as a fiddle. Then when Biden’s polls collapsed, @KamalaHarris was anointed the candidate and her hagiography was written with glowing acclaim from the press. But this could not hold as she ducked the media and held fast to the teleprompter.

Citizen journalists with their phone cameras in hand captured the real Kamala forcing her to defend her record and her plans in more media appearances. It did not go well and the public demanded to learn more so @KamalaHarris had to risk more unscripted media.

The doom loop was underway with perhaps 60 Minutes as one of the more dramatic examples, even after CBS tried to save her, most glaringly by excerpting one answer to replace a word salad response to another. But the citizen journalists on @X quickly caught and outed this fraud and demanded a transcript.

As many who supported Kamala began to realize that they have been misled, they became open to Trump as an alternative, but they didn’t want to rely on the media to understand him because they did not want to be misled again.

They wanted to hear the candidate in his own words and that is where @lexfridman and @joeroganhq long form podcasts came to the rescue. When Kamala was offered the same opportunities to explain herself, she rejected them. And the voting public could only draw a negative inference.

When the story of this election is written, I expect it will be as much about how half of America woke up to the reality that they have been manipulated by the media. This should lead to an abandonment by many of the MSM as their primary source of information. It will push more people to @X, to podcasts and other empirical sources, and it will lead to a more informed public.

The other outcome I hope happens is the implosion of the Democratic Party. The Party lied to the American people about the cognitive health and fitness of the president. It prevented, threatened, litigated and otherwise eliminated the ability of other candidates for the primary to compete, to get on ballots, and to even participate in a debate. The Party and the administration used lawfare in an attempt to imprison, bankrupt or otherwise kill off Trump as a candidate. These acts are collectively grave threats to our democracy. With the highest irony in order to hide these acts, the Party accused the opposition candidate of being the grave threat to democracy.

The Democratic Party proved itself to be fundamentally undemocratic. It needs a complete reboot. The leadership should be thrown out and those responsible should apologize to the American people.

Honest Abe said it best:

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

[O.W. Root @owroot]

Go to Springfield, order the cat, the whole thing, medium rare, grab a beer or two, make it three, curly fries and coleslaw, grab a chair out back, ask for the barbecue sauce, tell them you know barbecue.

[Martin Pelletier @MPelletierCIO]

Canada in a recession masked by immigration with zero economic per capita growth in 6 years and our minister of finance is cheerleading being the first to cut interest rates. What a complete gongshow.