Mark Carney has embarked once again on what can only be described as the Canadians Will Believe Anything™ Tour—a travelling seminar built on a single, highly reliable premise: that Canadian voters can be persuaded to accept decline provided it is narrated slowly, calmly, and by someone with a reassuring accent.
The latest tour stop is China, and Canadians actually believe that China can replace the United States as a trading partner. Libtards and, to be sure, the CBC are pushing this drivel.
The pitch is familiar. The economy is “strong.” Canada is “resilient.” The fundamentals are “sound.” And if you feel poorer, more anxious, and increasingly irrelevant, that is merely a failure of perception—yours.
This is where Carney leans forward slightly, as one does when explaining long division to a houseplant.
Never mind that Canada’s unemployment rate now sits roughly two full percentage points above the United States. Never mind that productivity growth has flatlined so completely that it now resembles a cardiac monitor in hospice care. Never mind that per-capita GDP is falling, not cyclically but structurally—meaning we are not pausing, we are sliding.
And above all, never mention the long-range projections. On current trends, Canadian per capita income by mid-century will be roughly half that of the United States. Half. Not “slightly lower.” Not “comparable with a different model.” Half. That is not convergence. That is managed decline. And no, our crappy health care does not make up the difference.
But decline, Canadians are told, is actually progress—if you narrate it properly.
At this point, the backup fantasy is introduced. If the United States is unreliable, chaotic, or insufficiently deferential to Canadian self-esteem, then surely we can “pivot” to China.
This idea survives only because it is never examined.
China cannot replace the United States as Canada’s primary economic partner. Not morally. Not politically. Structurally.
Start with geography. Canada and the U.S. share the longest undefended border in the world.
Our economies are not merely linked; they are interlaced. Supply chains cross the border multiple times before a product is finished. Energy infrastructure, pipelines, electricity grids, rail, and trucking networks were built together over generations.
You do not “pivot” away from geography. You submit to it.
China is 11,000 kilometres away.
Then there is market structure. The United States buys what Canada actually sells: energy, autos, aerospace components, machinery, agricultural products, and services. China does not want most of these on Canadian terms. It wants commodities at controlled prices, technology transfers without reciprocity, and political compliance as a condition of access.
The U.S. trades with Canada as a partner. China trades with countries as a leverage point.
Next, the law. The U.S. operates under a transparent legal system with enforceable contracts, independent courts, bankruptcy protections, and predictable regulatory behaviour. Canada may quarrel with Americans, but no Canadian firm worries that its CEO will be detained at the airport to gain diplomatic leverage.
China routinely does exactly that.
Which brings us to risk. Trade is not about volume alone; it is about reliability. The Chinese state can—and does—cut off imports overnight for political reasons. Ask Australia. Ask Lithuania. Ask Japan. Ask anyone who displeased Beijing on a Tuesday. Hell, ask me.
I own a farm in Southern Alberta, we (the farmer who does the real work for us, if he had me run the seeder I’d leave it wrapped around a telephone pole) planted Canola and we got a lower price this year because the Chinese, reacting to Carney’s 100% EV tariff (when it comes to the environment vs. protecting Ontario jobs, that’s a no-brainer; the environment can go to hell, along with Alberta farmers) decided that they did not want to purchase our Canola.
Canada is not large enough, feared enough, or essential enough to be exempt from such toddler games.
Then there is the currency problem. The U.S. dollar remains the world’s reserve currency. The Chinese yuan is not freely convertible, is tightly controlled by the state, and exists primarily as an instrument of domestic policy. You cannot build a stable, investment-driven export economy anchored to a currency that cannot float freely.
And finally, values, though this is where Canadian elites grow squeamish. China is not merely “different.” It is a surveillance state that kidnaps foreign citizens, imprisons dissidents, destroys civil society, and is currently conducting cultural genocide against its own Muslim population. One may admire Chinese civilisation—and one should—but the Chinese state is explicitly hostile to the liberal democratic order.
Have you already forgotten about the two Michaels?
It does not want to join the West.
It wants to replace it.
The idea that China will peacefully substitute for the United States as Canada’s anchor market is not just naïve—it is unserious. It ignores geography, law, capital markets, military power, and the simple fact that trade relationships are embedded in trust, not slogans.
Carney knows this. Of course he does.
But the point of the Canadians Will Believe Anything™ Tour is not accuracy. It is a reassurance. It is the careful curation of aggregates rather than per-capita reality, population growth rather than productivity, and spending rather than output.
Canada’s public finances are now structurally detached from growth. Deficits are normalised. Debt is ritualised. And yet voters are told—again—that this is what success looks like.
And they applaud.
This works because Canadian political culture has perfected a peculiar form of national gullibility. Canadians will accept almost any economic outcome provided it is delivered with sufficient politeness and moral self-congratulation. Tell them comparisons are “unhelpful,” and they will stop comparing. Tell them the U.S. is vulgar, and they will accept decline as a form of refinement.
Canadians may be the most gullible people on earth—and the higher their elbows rise at the dinner table, the stupider they become. Education does not inoculate against this; it often worsens it. The credentialed classes are the most enthusiastic consumers of fantasy, provided it arrives wrapped in technocratic language and mild contempt for dissent.
Carney understands this perfectly. His genius is not economic. It is theatrical. He knows Canadians do not want the truth; they want absolution. They want to be told that nothing fundamental must change, that no reckoning is required, and that decline can be rebranded as virtue.
So the tour continues. City after city. A patient man explaining to an incurious country why falling behind is actually a sign of wisdom.
And judging by the applause, it’s selling out every night.
Woof.
Canada has a lot of work ahead of us. The Moose can’t do it alone. Help the guy driving to safely steer down the road. I’m speaking metaphorically. Elbows Up!
Thoughts on the China trade agreements and the Alberta separatism movement?