I want to start (or join) an Elbows Up team in East Vancouver. My vision is for the group to organize protests, host speakers, hold rallies and town hall events, provide mutual aid, organize emergency preparedness training and skill sharing to build community resilience so that we are prepared for any of the potential crises that might hit our community (pandemics, climate change, earthquakes, MAGA invasions, etc.). I am not an experienced organizer, but I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and willing to learn. I would love to connect with others of like mind. If that's you, feel free to send me a private message.
I keep asking myself the question, how can the US sustain large (hard goods) trade deficits for decades? Where does the money come from to support that continued spending? They had the money on the day to buy the goods...... to me it means the trade balance of hard goods and services does not explain the whole situation. How can the table be tipped against the US except total US "wealth" continues to grow.
Global boycotts of key US domiciled brands, in addition to imports are a powerful tool with a much larger and broader impact.
S&P 500 companies account for approx. 16 trillion in sales. 29%-40% (different estimates) of that is sales registered in foreign markets, 4.5 trillion minimum. (would not be considered part of import/export balances). I can't verify what % is returned, but repatriated profits, reinvestments in parent businesses create an overconcentration of some activities/ R&D development in US. ie Global sales assist US GDP and ability to buy an import without having to sell a hard good (export).
I am not an economist, just curious.
Becoming more curious about things like; foreign investments that support activities in US (there is $2.8 trillion in commercial debt in US, US government debt held by other countries ($8 trillion), impact of USD being a global reserve currency (creates an inherent demand for $USD), and approximately $850 Billion annual budget deficit over the last 40 years, cash economy, crypto currency, stock market investment from foreign nationals (retail and institutional). Buying lots of stuff on that big US credit card balance. I am curious about how many holes in logic that US is being punished by foreign countries trade practices.
So is the US being disadvantaged in global trade? Only if you apply a very narrow perspective. The broader truth might be a situation where the US has gathered a number of advantages over the years that continue to fuel its stellar growth in addition to its inherent national strengths.
Everyone just taking a nice long break from ALL US brands would send a shockwave to US business leaders who hold leverage. What do you think a >10% reduction in global sales of identifiable US brands do...... (feel free to take Tesla to zero) If you can't cut a brand out, cut it back. Substitute with local products to keep your neighbours employed or from other countries that support open trade with each other.
Now is not the time to sit back and be depressed and despondent. Action breeds hope and optimism, not the other way around. Do whatever you can, but just do it.
Hopefully the new Minister of Public Safety puts out a plan to develop civil defence organizations across the country. Also comes in very handy at times of environmental disasters.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge, your experience and your insight with us Charlie Angus!! You have always been an exceptional leader and protector of the North… we are all so grateful for you!! Elbows Up!! ❤️🇨🇦 Canada Strong!! ❤️🇨🇦
Charlie - this is absolute "community gold" about what sustains the economy (next to the environment.) Did you know that around 86% of all business numbers are MICRO business (Big business is less than 0.5%) This makes Micro-Business (those employing less than 5) are the "Plankton" of the economy, from which ALL larger businesses "feed" directly or indirectly, AND without which larger business could not exist. For starters, PLEASE read the full AMAZING truth about this and the power it represents, if communities support local and micro. https://bobneville.substack.com/p/reality-checktheres-none-so-blind?r=4ys7o8
PS, look at any smaller community. If you take out Micro-Business, there will be next to nothing left - that community's livability will be virtually gone. The same applies to any community of any size. Think about this.
Where are the Democrat voices? Bernie is stirring a maga pot, maybe, but the republican base is powerless. Congress Republicans are busy wanting to cede its powers to the executive branch. The courts may be an option.
Canadians have to realize that Trump can't promise statehood to Canada (or anywhere else.) He wouldn't want Canada with any political power. We would be a territory without power like Puerto Rico or DC.
Trump has a big mouth but no guts. He has been a coward surrounded by goons protecting him his entire life. He expects loyalty but gives none. He wants you to bow down to the King not disrespect the creep who deserves no respect. He claims he will take Canada but he said the
Ukraine war would be over on day 1 of his Presidency. He is a pathological liar, don't trust him. This cannot continue, he spends his days golfing at Mar-a-Largo while Musk guts our government agencies. He should be in a psych ward. I truly believe that trump & musk will be stopped before it's too late.
OK, but if Substack, the majority of social media platforms (Meta, X, etc..) and the Internet as a whole (started by DARPA) are owned by the United States (yes, I recognize that the Internet is globally interconnected system, but a helluva lot of it is routed through American servers), shouldn't we be burning our connections to these platforms as well?
You are a beacon in these dark times Charlie. Throughout your years of service as the MP for Timmins - James Bay, you have repeatedly shown your determination and resolve to 'Get things done' in your fight fir thr many northern indigenous communities , 2 of which are my ancestral homes (Moose Cree and Flying Post FNs)
Im thr 2nd Great Grandson of Alexander Joseph McLeod and rhe 5th Great Grandson of Philip Turnor, so my family roots run deep into what we now know as Canada, so for this orange dictator to threaten the sovereignty of the country my ancestors helped build in a 'Good Way' pisses me right off. I served with the 1 Military Police Reg't for a short while back in the 90s, and were I not disabled and therefore not fit, I'd be heading to the nearest recruiting office and re-enlisting because no enemy state is crossing the Medicine line to take what is ours!
What’s that gesture of Mark Carney’s telling us, we wonder? Maybe our chances of recovery after 9.5 years of bad Liberal policies that have crushed our economy and sunk us in massive debt? People need to know that Carney WILL make things WORSE. Guaranteed.
Have a read of this article of Conrad Black’s in The National Post, March 5, 2025…
Conrad Black: “Sulky Mark Carney not what we need”
Opinion by Conrad Black • 1w (March 5)• 5 min read
The National Post
“Canada appeared last week to be undergoing a paroxysm over U.S. President Donald Trump. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau incited public fears three weeks ago by declaring before a microphone he knew to be open that Trump was serious about taking over Canada. A knowledgeable and worldly friend who always has perceptive opinions on world affairs wrote me last weekend expressing his concern that Trump was making a spheres of influence agreement with Russia that would permit President Vladimir Putin to absorb Ukraine while the U.S. took over Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal Zone. None of this is happening. When he was first elected president eight years ago, many otherwise or apparently serious people made outrageous allegations, such as the national intelligence director, James Clapper, who declared that Trump was a Russian intelligence asset who had been elected by Russian manipulation of the 2016 election. All of this was demonstrated to be utter fiction. And we have now, after Trump has surmounted corrupt political impeachments and prosecutions and assassination attempts, and won an uncontestedly fair election (and complete acquittal) from the majority of his countrymen, graduated to the point where his legitimacy as president is accepted, but fantastic schemes of collusion with America’s rivals and aggression against its allies are being imputed to him by people who know better.
“This newspaper recently headlined on its front-page that Trump was behaving with “dishonour” in Ukraine. He is working out a peace that preserves 85 per cent of that country’s territory and population, and assures that its revised borders will be guaranteed by Russia and the principal European NATO powers, that Ukraine can affiliate with the European Union when ready, and the United States will remain an ally in solidarity with the European guarantor-powers of post-war Ukraine, and military assistance will be replaced by massive reconstruction assistance. The U.S. will supply sophisticated military assistance in exchange for strategic minerals mined in Ukraine, which was President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ‘s initiative. Wherein is the dishonour? There is none. I cannot be the only person in this country who has noticed that there was barely a peep about peace in Ukraine until Trump was inaugurated. There have been approximately 1.25-million casualties in that war, about half of them deaths, and as many as 10-million refugees, and there was no exit strategy except the West giving Ukraine sufficient ordnance and weaponry to avoid defeat but not to win, until there were no more Ukrainians alive to pull the triggers.
“Every week we learn more about the corruption of the American bipartisan political establishment that Trump has overthrown. Using the excuse of the COVID pandemic in 2020 to deluge the country with harvested ballots (exposed by the fact that the 2024 electorate was at least two million votes smaller than 2020’s, despite a significant population increase and mighty efforts by both parties to get out the vote), the attempted censorship of discordant opinions, the whitewashing of the crimes of the Biden family, the colossal feather-bedding of the federal payroll with agents of woke anti-Americanism. All of it is oozing out now, sluggish and filthy. The U.S. public unambiguously approves what Trump calls “draining the swamp.” The cameo role played by Canada in the propagation of Trump-hate is especially contemptible, as American political events, though of legitimate concern to us, are none of our business.
“Trump told me a month before the election that he has nothing but goodwill for Canada, “but you have better trade negotiators than we do, and we’ll have to do something about that.” He is a poker player-negotiator who starts with a shock-and-awe opening gambit to try to get an edge at the start. We are already deescalating toward normal trade renegotiations. This is a subject that is so complicated and requires such intricate trade-offs that only specialists can negotiate it. When Justin Trudeau scurried down to Palm Beach, Fla., with his coat-tails trailing behind him and told his host that Canada would collapse under the weight of the contemplated tariff increase, Trump took him literally and asked what the rationale of the country was since English-speaking Canadians are practically indistinguishable from Americans from northern states (meant as a compliment), and Canada relies completely on the U.S. for its defence. Trudeau blundered into this, Trump’s response was not irrational, though reference to a 51st state for a country of 41-million people was gratuitous, but the discredited Liberals have grappled this to their bosoms as a lifeline to continue their total self-immersion in the public trough.
“Now we are subjected to the toe-curling, cringe-making and nausea-inducing spectacle of Mark Carney campaigning for the succession to Trudeau as the man to negotiate with Trump, by insulting Trump with juvenile snideries and by disparaging U.S. society, as well as to exploit the “huge opportunity” presented by strangling our greatest industry (oil and gas) and inflicting skyrocketing costs on everyone by abandoning conventional energy. Like the Rip Van Winkle awakening after 20 years, he is trumpeting Canada’s crumbling health-care system as a moral advantage over the U.S. Our health care waiting times grow endlessly; we have many thousands too few doctors (many of the best we had are now happily in the U.S.) and almost all ailments have to be treated in chronically over-crowded emergency rooms, though three-quarters of them are not emergencies. This is the system that epitomizes to our likely next prime minister the superiority Carney detects in our society over the United States, although the average American has an annual income 50 per cent higher than the average Canadian and the poorest American state has a higher per capita income than the wealthiest Canadian province.
“If you are about to negotiate with someone who represents an entity eight times as populous, 15 times as rich and 1,000 times as strong militarily as yourself, you do not begin by reviling the opposite party as a neanderthalian beast, having as an opening gambit said that he could completely flatten you by raising tariffs.
“Trump’s gratuitous remarks about a 51st state are irritating, but not incomprehensible given that we are almost completely reliant on the Americans for our national defence, that our prime minister threw in the towel pre-emptively on tariff discussions and there was no obvious purpose to our persistence as an independent country given our trade deficit with the U.S. (which Trump exaggerated, as is his habit, but Trudeau didn’t know enough to correct him). We should pull our military weight, adopt policies that encourage investment and economic growth that raises per capita income, emancipate ourselves from climate change idiocy, which Carney wants to make more onerous, and develop the thick skins of a more confident people. The American flag is burned by hooligans and riffraff all the time all over the world and Americans don’t notice. It is time for Canadian leadership that is self-confident and not sulky, under-achieving, hyper-sensitive and not thunder-struck with paranoia about the weather.”
My title above is to bring two things forward, either or both of which I hope that Charlie can pick up and elaborate on.
1) In the past few days, Trump has been making noises about how, in his view, our border with the USA is "artificial". The implication is that he does not view it as valid and it should be adjusted to suit his whim. Of course it's artificial, all international borders are artificial and agreed upon by the concerned parties. It's when one party or the other doesn't accept the agreement that conflict arises. Case in point: Russia/Ukraine. I see this as Trump's next verbal attack on our sovereignty, more red meat for his base.
2) Along the lines of establishing local 'elbows up' cells, I think pro tem an important function of these cells would be to educate on what "Buy Canadian" means. It's a pretty hard thing to do, the buying Canadian I mean. Or rather, it comes in varying shades of grey. Take Tim Horton's for example. The coffee beans are not Canadian, but they're not US either so I'll give it a pass. The beans are roasted in Canada, the stores are local franchises, the employees are Canadian or at least living in Canada and paying income taxes. But ultimately some fraction of the profits flow to the USA because of partial USA ownership. Does that mean we should boycott Tim's? Another example is Kraft peanut butter. USA owned company, USA peanuts, but prepared in Canada. Should we boycott it? I believe where we draw the line on how much USA we are willing to accept is a personal decision, but we need to know the facts in order to make that decision. That could be one of the functions of the resistance cells. Or the Feds could throw together a website with the facts. (Personally, I miss peanut butter, so you have some idea where my line is.)
Completely agree. Boycotting is extremely powerful provided it is organized, concerted and strategic. I’m surprised Americans haven’t figured that out. Like you say, we can lead by example.
I want to start (or join) an Elbows Up team in East Vancouver. My vision is for the group to organize protests, host speakers, hold rallies and town hall events, provide mutual aid, organize emergency preparedness training and skill sharing to build community resilience so that we are prepared for any of the potential crises that might hit our community (pandemics, climate change, earthquakes, MAGA invasions, etc.). I am not an experienced organizer, but I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and willing to learn. I would love to connect with others of like mind. If that's you, feel free to send me a private message.
I keep asking myself the question, how can the US sustain large (hard goods) trade deficits for decades? Where does the money come from to support that continued spending? They had the money on the day to buy the goods...... to me it means the trade balance of hard goods and services does not explain the whole situation. How can the table be tipped against the US except total US "wealth" continues to grow.
Global boycotts of key US domiciled brands, in addition to imports are a powerful tool with a much larger and broader impact.
S&P 500 companies account for approx. 16 trillion in sales. 29%-40% (different estimates) of that is sales registered in foreign markets, 4.5 trillion minimum. (would not be considered part of import/export balances). I can't verify what % is returned, but repatriated profits, reinvestments in parent businesses create an overconcentration of some activities/ R&D development in US. ie Global sales assist US GDP and ability to buy an import without having to sell a hard good (export).
I am not an economist, just curious.
Becoming more curious about things like; foreign investments that support activities in US (there is $2.8 trillion in commercial debt in US, US government debt held by other countries ($8 trillion), impact of USD being a global reserve currency (creates an inherent demand for $USD), and approximately $850 Billion annual budget deficit over the last 40 years, cash economy, crypto currency, stock market investment from foreign nationals (retail and institutional). Buying lots of stuff on that big US credit card balance. I am curious about how many holes in logic that US is being punished by foreign countries trade practices.
So is the US being disadvantaged in global trade? Only if you apply a very narrow perspective. The broader truth might be a situation where the US has gathered a number of advantages over the years that continue to fuel its stellar growth in addition to its inherent national strengths.
Everyone just taking a nice long break from ALL US brands would send a shockwave to US business leaders who hold leverage. What do you think a >10% reduction in global sales of identifiable US brands do...... (feel free to take Tesla to zero) If you can't cut a brand out, cut it back. Substitute with local products to keep your neighbours employed or from other countries that support open trade with each other.
Now is not the time to sit back and be depressed and despondent. Action breeds hope and optimism, not the other way around. Do whatever you can, but just do it.
@Charlie Angus:
So, can you take action to start an “Elbows Up” movement, with local branches?
Someone needs to start the ball rolling.
Then, I think, it will go viral and become self-sustaining.
Hopefully the new Minister of Public Safety puts out a plan to develop civil defence organizations across the country. Also comes in very handy at times of environmental disasters.
Spot on Charlie!
Thank you for sharing your knowledge, your experience and your insight with us Charlie Angus!! You have always been an exceptional leader and protector of the North… we are all so grateful for you!! Elbows Up!! ❤️🇨🇦 Canada Strong!! ❤️🇨🇦
Charlie - this is absolute "community gold" about what sustains the economy (next to the environment.) Did you know that around 86% of all business numbers are MICRO business (Big business is less than 0.5%) This makes Micro-Business (those employing less than 5) are the "Plankton" of the economy, from which ALL larger businesses "feed" directly or indirectly, AND without which larger business could not exist. For starters, PLEASE read the full AMAZING truth about this and the power it represents, if communities support local and micro. https://bobneville.substack.com/p/reality-checktheres-none-so-blind?r=4ys7o8
PS, look at any smaller community. If you take out Micro-Business, there will be next to nothing left - that community's livability will be virtually gone. The same applies to any community of any size. Think about this.
Where are the Democrat voices? Bernie is stirring a maga pot, maybe, but the republican base is powerless. Congress Republicans are busy wanting to cede its powers to the executive branch. The courts may be an option.
Canadians have to realize that Trump can't promise statehood to Canada (or anywhere else.) He wouldn't want Canada with any political power. We would be a territory without power like Puerto Rico or DC.
Trump has a big mouth but no guts. He has been a coward surrounded by goons protecting him his entire life. He expects loyalty but gives none. He wants you to bow down to the King not disrespect the creep who deserves no respect. He claims he will take Canada but he said the
Ukraine war would be over on day 1 of his Presidency. He is a pathological liar, don't trust him. This cannot continue, he spends his days golfing at Mar-a-Largo while Musk guts our government agencies. He should be in a psych ward. I truly believe that trump & musk will be stopped before it's too late.
OK, but if Substack, the majority of social media platforms (Meta, X, etc..) and the Internet as a whole (started by DARPA) are owned by the United States (yes, I recognize that the Internet is globally interconnected system, but a helluva lot of it is routed through American servers), shouldn't we be burning our connections to these platforms as well?
You are a beacon in these dark times Charlie. Throughout your years of service as the MP for Timmins - James Bay, you have repeatedly shown your determination and resolve to 'Get things done' in your fight fir thr many northern indigenous communities , 2 of which are my ancestral homes (Moose Cree and Flying Post FNs)
Im thr 2nd Great Grandson of Alexander Joseph McLeod and rhe 5th Great Grandson of Philip Turnor, so my family roots run deep into what we now know as Canada, so for this orange dictator to threaten the sovereignty of the country my ancestors helped build in a 'Good Way' pisses me right off. I served with the 1 Military Police Reg't for a short while back in the 90s, and were I not disabled and therefore not fit, I'd be heading to the nearest recruiting office and re-enlisting because no enemy state is crossing the Medicine line to take what is ours!
Elbows up!
What’s that gesture of Mark Carney’s telling us, we wonder? Maybe our chances of recovery after 9.5 years of bad Liberal policies that have crushed our economy and sunk us in massive debt? People need to know that Carney WILL make things WORSE. Guaranteed.
Have a read of this article of Conrad Black’s in The National Post, March 5, 2025…
Conrad Black: “Sulky Mark Carney not what we need”
Opinion by Conrad Black • 1w (March 5)• 5 min read
The National Post
“Canada appeared last week to be undergoing a paroxysm over U.S. President Donald Trump. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau incited public fears three weeks ago by declaring before a microphone he knew to be open that Trump was serious about taking over Canada. A knowledgeable and worldly friend who always has perceptive opinions on world affairs wrote me last weekend expressing his concern that Trump was making a spheres of influence agreement with Russia that would permit President Vladimir Putin to absorb Ukraine while the U.S. took over Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal Zone. None of this is happening. When he was first elected president eight years ago, many otherwise or apparently serious people made outrageous allegations, such as the national intelligence director, James Clapper, who declared that Trump was a Russian intelligence asset who had been elected by Russian manipulation of the 2016 election. All of this was demonstrated to be utter fiction. And we have now, after Trump has surmounted corrupt political impeachments and prosecutions and assassination attempts, and won an uncontestedly fair election (and complete acquittal) from the majority of his countrymen, graduated to the point where his legitimacy as president is accepted, but fantastic schemes of collusion with America’s rivals and aggression against its allies are being imputed to him by people who know better.
“This newspaper recently headlined on its front-page that Trump was behaving with “dishonour” in Ukraine. He is working out a peace that preserves 85 per cent of that country’s territory and population, and assures that its revised borders will be guaranteed by Russia and the principal European NATO powers, that Ukraine can affiliate with the European Union when ready, and the United States will remain an ally in solidarity with the European guarantor-powers of post-war Ukraine, and military assistance will be replaced by massive reconstruction assistance. The U.S. will supply sophisticated military assistance in exchange for strategic minerals mined in Ukraine, which was President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ‘s initiative. Wherein is the dishonour? There is none. I cannot be the only person in this country who has noticed that there was barely a peep about peace in Ukraine until Trump was inaugurated. There have been approximately 1.25-million casualties in that war, about half of them deaths, and as many as 10-million refugees, and there was no exit strategy except the West giving Ukraine sufficient ordnance and weaponry to avoid defeat but not to win, until there were no more Ukrainians alive to pull the triggers.
“Every week we learn more about the corruption of the American bipartisan political establishment that Trump has overthrown. Using the excuse of the COVID pandemic in 2020 to deluge the country with harvested ballots (exposed by the fact that the 2024 electorate was at least two million votes smaller than 2020’s, despite a significant population increase and mighty efforts by both parties to get out the vote), the attempted censorship of discordant opinions, the whitewashing of the crimes of the Biden family, the colossal feather-bedding of the federal payroll with agents of woke anti-Americanism. All of it is oozing out now, sluggish and filthy. The U.S. public unambiguously approves what Trump calls “draining the swamp.” The cameo role played by Canada in the propagation of Trump-hate is especially contemptible, as American political events, though of legitimate concern to us, are none of our business.
“Trump told me a month before the election that he has nothing but goodwill for Canada, “but you have better trade negotiators than we do, and we’ll have to do something about that.” He is a poker player-negotiator who starts with a shock-and-awe opening gambit to try to get an edge at the start. We are already deescalating toward normal trade renegotiations. This is a subject that is so complicated and requires such intricate trade-offs that only specialists can negotiate it. When Justin Trudeau scurried down to Palm Beach, Fla., with his coat-tails trailing behind him and told his host that Canada would collapse under the weight of the contemplated tariff increase, Trump took him literally and asked what the rationale of the country was since English-speaking Canadians are practically indistinguishable from Americans from northern states (meant as a compliment), and Canada relies completely on the U.S. for its defence. Trudeau blundered into this, Trump’s response was not irrational, though reference to a 51st state for a country of 41-million people was gratuitous, but the discredited Liberals have grappled this to their bosoms as a lifeline to continue their total self-immersion in the public trough.
“Now we are subjected to the toe-curling, cringe-making and nausea-inducing spectacle of Mark Carney campaigning for the succession to Trudeau as the man to negotiate with Trump, by insulting Trump with juvenile snideries and by disparaging U.S. society, as well as to exploit the “huge opportunity” presented by strangling our greatest industry (oil and gas) and inflicting skyrocketing costs on everyone by abandoning conventional energy. Like the Rip Van Winkle awakening after 20 years, he is trumpeting Canada’s crumbling health-care system as a moral advantage over the U.S. Our health care waiting times grow endlessly; we have many thousands too few doctors (many of the best we had are now happily in the U.S.) and almost all ailments have to be treated in chronically over-crowded emergency rooms, though three-quarters of them are not emergencies. This is the system that epitomizes to our likely next prime minister the superiority Carney detects in our society over the United States, although the average American has an annual income 50 per cent higher than the average Canadian and the poorest American state has a higher per capita income than the wealthiest Canadian province.
“If you are about to negotiate with someone who represents an entity eight times as populous, 15 times as rich and 1,000 times as strong militarily as yourself, you do not begin by reviling the opposite party as a neanderthalian beast, having as an opening gambit said that he could completely flatten you by raising tariffs.
“Trump’s gratuitous remarks about a 51st state are irritating, but not incomprehensible given that we are almost completely reliant on the Americans for our national defence, that our prime minister threw in the towel pre-emptively on tariff discussions and there was no obvious purpose to our persistence as an independent country given our trade deficit with the U.S. (which Trump exaggerated, as is his habit, but Trudeau didn’t know enough to correct him). We should pull our military weight, adopt policies that encourage investment and economic growth that raises per capita income, emancipate ourselves from climate change idiocy, which Carney wants to make more onerous, and develop the thick skins of a more confident people. The American flag is burned by hooligans and riffraff all the time all over the world and Americans don’t notice. It is time for Canadian leadership that is self-confident and not sulky, under-achieving, hyper-sensitive and not thunder-struck with paranoia about the weather.”
National Post
National Post owned by Postmedia American Conservatives.
Conrad Black - Robber Baron, Felon, Pardoned by Donald Trump.
Yeah.
Charlie thanks for your voice on this, you are the best.
Also, given Don Braid's history on this issue, when he says "armed resistance" he means using his arms to fondle the invaders.
Where To Draw The Line?
My title above is to bring two things forward, either or both of which I hope that Charlie can pick up and elaborate on.
1) In the past few days, Trump has been making noises about how, in his view, our border with the USA is "artificial". The implication is that he does not view it as valid and it should be adjusted to suit his whim. Of course it's artificial, all international borders are artificial and agreed upon by the concerned parties. It's when one party or the other doesn't accept the agreement that conflict arises. Case in point: Russia/Ukraine. I see this as Trump's next verbal attack on our sovereignty, more red meat for his base.
2) Along the lines of establishing local 'elbows up' cells, I think pro tem an important function of these cells would be to educate on what "Buy Canadian" means. It's a pretty hard thing to do, the buying Canadian I mean. Or rather, it comes in varying shades of grey. Take Tim Horton's for example. The coffee beans are not Canadian, but they're not US either so I'll give it a pass. The beans are roasted in Canada, the stores are local franchises, the employees are Canadian or at least living in Canada and paying income taxes. But ultimately some fraction of the profits flow to the USA because of partial USA ownership. Does that mean we should boycott Tim's? Another example is Kraft peanut butter. USA owned company, USA peanuts, but prepared in Canada. Should we boycott it? I believe where we draw the line on how much USA we are willing to accept is a personal decision, but we need to know the facts in order to make that decision. That could be one of the functions of the resistance cells. Or the Feds could throw together a website with the facts. (Personally, I miss peanut butter, so you have some idea where my line is.)
Completely agree. Boycotting is extremely powerful provided it is organized, concerted and strategic. I’m surprised Americans haven’t figured that out. Like you say, we can lead by example.