The Liberals want to expand Nafta to cover ‘gender rights’ and ‘indigenous rights.’
But Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland wants to make Nafta “progressive.” So Canada’s Liberal government proposes including new chapters related to “gender rights” and “indigenous rights.” Seriously. Ms. Freeland wants Nafta to reflect the government’s “commitment to gender equality” and “our commitment to improving our relationship with Indigenous peoples.”
..This is another frustrating example of Canada’s political culture. The Liberals are perennial fence-sitters, content to shift with the prevailing political winds. The current government is one of the most left-leaning in years.. The Liberals also seem intent on blurring the lines between political and economic reality and becoming a political and economic alternative to the U.S. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recent profile in Rolling Stone—cover line: “Why Can’t He Be Our President?”—is part of a long-term marketing strategy to make the young, hip, photogenic leader a progressive hero in the face of Donald Trump’s America... only 43% of Canadians hold a favorable view of the U.S. That’s down from 65% during President Obama’s last year in office.. Canada’s political culture approves of preposterous proposals like gender and indigenous rights in Nafta. It’s the type of modern progressive agenda many Canadians want... If Canada and the U.S. can’t find common ground on Nafta, Mexico may end up becoming North America’s voice of economic sanity.
Canada’s Trump Strategy: Go Around Him
Laid in the first days after Mr. Trump’s election win, the plan even enlists Brian Mulroney, a former Conservative prime minister and political nemesis of Mr. Trudeau’s father, who had also been prime minister. Mr. Mulroney knows Mr. Trump and his commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, from social circuits in southern Florida, where all three keep vacation homes.
.. Though emphasizing the benefits of harmony, the Canadians are not above flexing muscle, with a provincial government at one point quietly threatening trade restrictions against New York State.
.. His new foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, a former journalist with long experience in the United States and an unapologetic champion of the global liberal order, is seen as able to coax the Americans when possible and defy them when necessary.
Ms. Freeland’s team of America-whisperers includes Andrew Leslie, a former lieutenant general and Afghanistan veteran who knows many of the American generals filling out Mr. Trump’s administration.
Mr. Trudeau established a “war room” dedicated to the United States, headed by Brian Clow
.. Ministers’ schedules resemble those of rock bands on summer tours. They travel armed with data on the precise dollar amount and number of jobs supported by Canadian firms and trade in that area.
.. when Mr. Trump announced that the United States would leave the Paris climate agreement. Canadian officials said they would instead seek climate deals with American states, many of which were already in progress.
The Global Effort to Flatter Ivanka
the achingly obvious oddity of deciding that Trump, whose experience on the public stage largely consists of marketing her clothing and jewelry lines, and her efforts to get her father, Donald Trump, elected, was qualified to sit between Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, and Chrystia Freeland, the Foreign Minister of Canada.
.. maybe the make-believe about Ivanka coming up with world-changing ideas is harmless, if it means that her father will look kindly on the World Bank—although a report, this week, in the Washington Post about the conditions in a Chinese factory run by the contractor who makes her brand’s clothes (extremely low wages and long hours) does not quite fit into the picture.
.. He’s been a tremendous champion of supporting families and enabling them to thrive in the new reality of a duelling—”
When asked, more specifically, how she advised him, she said, “It’s been an ongoing discussion I’ve had with my father most of my adult life, and we’re very aligned in many, many areas. And that’s why he’s encouraged me to fully lean into this opportunity and come into the White House and be by his side.” The implication was that nepotism was one of her father’s virtues, and proof of his good character.
.. when NBC News asked her about admitting Syrian refugees to the United States, she said that it should be “part of the discussion, but that’s not going to be enough in and of itself.” The resulting headlines suggested that this constituted a break with her father. But how, exactly? Refugees are “part of the discussion” when he rails against them; and “not going to be enough” could just as easily refer to what the President sees as the need for “extreme vetting,” or letting in only Christians. She referred, for a second time, to the areas “in which I’m fully aligned with my father—which are many.” “Many” could mean anything,
.. Foreign countries and companies might appreciate the idea that they can more easily handle Donald Trump if they lavish his daughter with attention; this is a common enough practice when dealing with authoritarian governments.
Terry Glavin: Enter the Freeland-Nazi conspiracy — and the amping-up of Russia’s mischief in Canada
Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s ambitious young foreign affairs minister, is secretly itching to draw Canada into a showdown with Russia because of the seething hatreds she inherited from her Ukrainian grandfather, a Nazi collaborator and war profiteer she never told us about. She’s been lying about her family’s sordid past all along, and she’s been lying to Canadians about what’s really going on in Ukraine. She’s dangerous.
.. The Monday announcement was overshadowed by the gathering pace of the Freeland conspiracy theory, however, and by Freeland’s own chilling caution that Canada should expect to be targeted by the same mischief of Russian disinformation that the Kremlin has used to target the United States and Europe.
.. You see how it works? Instead of headlines about Canada’s response to Russia’s brutal violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and the 10,000 lives lost to Vladimir Putin’s thuggish belligerence, we’re being entertained by salacious innuendo about Chrystia Freeland and encouraged to question whether it is only because of that scheming harridan’s Russophobic impetuousness that we’re being so beastly to the Russians in the first place.
.. Kremlin-friendly smear campaigns
.. a Moscow-based freelancer, John Helmer. Back in the 1980s, in Washington, D.C., Helmer found himself at the centre of a maelstrom of allegations that he was a KGB asset. He left for Russia almost immediately thereafter, and has worked in Moscow ever since.
The other man is the notorious far-right Luxembourg-based Polish “analyst” Stanislas Balcerac.