(www.theguardian.com)
* Arbitrarily slapped high tariffs on all goods from Canada while exempting Russia and Belarus.
* Threatened to take over the country by force.
* Officially suspended the Permanent Joint Board on Defense between US and Canada because of criticism of US foreign policy by the Canadian PM
To address the article's context, is the E-3 Sentry superior to the Erieye/GlobalEye?
The E-7 Wedgetail is a vastly more capable platform than the Erieye/GlobalEye in pretty much every way, but costs four times as much, and there are other issues with Canada and Boeing as have been pointed out by another commenter.
The airframe itself, perhaps. As for the radar, that remains to be seen. The E-7 uses an L-band AESA radar, whereas the GlobalEye's radar operates in the higher-frequency S-band. In general, higher frequencies are better for engaging smaller/faster targets, but perform worse in adverse weather conditions.
It's been a long time since I took my electronic warfare courses, but in a situation where the radar is expected to spot small drones and other targets I would prefer a higher frequency radar.
It should be noted that the US military itself didn't want the Wedgetail in favor of a space-based solution, until Hegseth forced them for publicity reasons.
Canada has unfortunately been in conflict with Boeing since before either of Trump's terms, originally triggered by Boeing's trade complaints regarding Bombardier's government subsidies.
I'd mention that whether a piece of tech can beat another one on one is a consideration but a larger concern is how maintainable your fleet is. Canada is specifically moving to grow ties with the EU (and has joined their defense industry network) which really incentivizes having a fleet that is a similar makeup to other European countries.
The tariffs and international unpredictability of the US is one motivator - but growing closer to EU markets is also a specific focus of the Carney government. The current Trump administration isn't even the only rationale for this - in 2017 the US imposed extremely heavy tariffs on Bombardier that bankrupted the majority of the corporation.
Now that they're older, they're sparring once again, just like siblings do over the parents' estate.
The whole neighbourhood thinks you're assholes and bullies, we're all scared. But that is bring us closer together as result, so there's some upside.
Racism? Oh man, visit any other country that is more homogenous.... lol. Everything is relative.
Canadian and American racism is documented in specific events, unlike in other countries. I'd be hard pressed to find specific racism-driven events in Poland or Czechia, even though they top the racist charts.
I'm not American so your second point is completely moot.
He is unique in that he seems to have absolute control over the Republican base which makes all internal party checks fail. The rest is provided by a hyper polarized media landscape and a conservative supreme court majority that seems to be open to radical upheavals. The combination of all three has rendered the constitutional safe guards ineffective. In other words, we seem to have run into an edge case in the US constitution.
The supreme court won't change materially in the near future and likely the polarization will continue, but it's hard to image someone in the future with such an absolute grip on either party. So, hopefully a soft restart of the system in 2028 will be the last of this edge case for a while. That's the hope, anyway!
The two countries have far more in common shared interests than differences, so odds are things will drift back to normal in the future.
America chose this. America continues to tolerate this. America enabled this.
This isn't something that Trump can be scapegoated for. This is what many Americans wanted, or at the very least, it is what many Americans are willing to tolerate.
We also take issue with them cozying up to the ChiComms.
Enough Canadians (seriously, the vast majority) live close enough to the border that they could make a weekly trip to the USA and purchase American dairy and other American goods. In fact, prior to the tariffs many Canadians did make regular shopping trips across the border.
So let's be clear: we were buying your products to the extent we wanted to, already.
does everything possible to spite the Canadian economy. then has the gall to be surprised that Canada would cozy up to people who don't shit on them
who would have guessed?
unless the US extinguishes all of its billionaires and somehow convinces 1/3 to 1/2 of their population to not vote against their own interests it'll happen again
How have you forgotten bush so quickly? Why would bipartisan support of this invasion of Iraq ameliorate an obvious crime against humanity?
Europe clearly has its own bigotries to deal with before it is trustworthy. And islamophobia is only the start
Because comparative advantage.
Trump has nothing to do with it.
Iran would be a better ally. China would be a better ally. Fucking Russia would be a better ally. Why did we decide to die on the hills of (loosely translated, I guess) mageddo?
But instead our state leans into exterminating people because our PR team was inspired by Goebbels and was trained to hate muslims
But again, if you don't want problems with Israel don't make problems with Israel. Their populace is militarized like few other and seemingly with a lot of political cohesion. Egypt has learned not to poke the bear. So has Jordan.
Genuinely, what makes the US untrustworthy if not Trump? I’m curious what I may be missing.
We invaded Korea, and then Vietnam, and a few hundred other interventions that don't seem to be sanctioned by the international community. All because of a hardon for ideology that doesn't seem to actually reflect the interests of the people who live here.
what a terrible bad faith arguemnt
N Korea invaded the south and the UN voted to create a joint force in there to defend it.
And in general this is how Saab has tried to court us -- by making promises (how real is unclear) to bring manufacturing jobs to Canada to build things.
That is something the US has not done, will not do, and most importantly cannot do under Trump/Bissent/etc.
Canada is very unlikely to be invaded, so the actual military effectiveness / superiority is only one factor. Reducing unemployment and enhancing our manufacturing sector is as or more important.
Except from the south.
But yes you're right. The only times we've been invaded were from that direction.
Looked it up:
4 Times the U.S. Invaded Canada
https://www.mentalfloss.com/history/war/4-times-us-invaded-c...
This is due to sanctions. There is no trade between Russia and the USA to put tariffs on.
The Saab is likely cheaper to operate as it's a smaller plane and Canada only has to patrol its northern border.
I'm genuinely curious to know what you think the author's pre-existing beliefs are.
You seem to have a few of your own: "Canada only has to patrol its northern border"
Another belief I hold is that you didn't care to click the link or read past the title because it literally states "aircraft to patrol Arctic territory" in bold font in the sub-heading.
You're being deliberately obtuse with nothing constructive to add to this discussion.
At what point on this current trajectory in the US would that change... mostly facetiously, but not entirely..
No coincidence that Albertans are sparking up the seceding issue again. When 10% of the population produces nearly 20% of the country's GDP it's a breeding ground for contempt. And it also seems like Albertans are the butt of a lot of jokes from the other Canadians anyway.
I'm sure this US government would love to see an "independent" Alberta.
They (and Sask too) do swing on the higher end in GDP per capita, but it's not a 2:1 by any stretch.
Which isn't that far off from BC's 13.80%:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_provinces_and...
Because as you would might say: I'm sure this Canadian government would love to see an "independent" California.
The only thing really stopping Alberta from leaving is whether or not BC, Ontario, and Quebec are willing to fight a war to stop it.
And that gets a lot more complicated if the US also wants Alberta to go independent....
Canada might not be willing to fight, but the Indigenous probably are.
None of this matters in this context. The indiginous people literally do not matter. It's bad, but it's just how it is when white Europeans start fighting over land in North America. We have 3 centuries of evidence.
Unlike the individual US states, Alberta never joined Canada. It was not an entity that existed prior to Canada's confederation. Alberta was basically pencil-whipped into existence by carving out a chunk of an already existing territory (the Northwest Territory).
Despite American and Russian destabilization campaigns in Canada, there is no legal mechanism by which Canadian provinces can unilaterally secede.
>And that gets a lot more complicated if the US also wants Alberta to go independent....
Recent past polling overwhelmingly showed Albertans in favor of remaining in Canada. This latest frenzy is widely known to be a foreign influence operation.
The Supreme Court has already ruled that Canada and other provinces would be obligated to negotiate terms of separation should a province ever vote to leave in a clear referendum.
Yes, support for leaving is probably at 10-20%. Just having the referendum will build the infrastructure and political machinery for keeping it alive for a long time from the first try. I live here and I'm not a fan of Smith for encouraging it at all.
I implied no such thing. In fact I was careful to use the term "unilaterally" when referring to secession. My understanding is doing it properly would require a full constitutional amendment.
Legal? Who's laws? Albertans can just declare that they don't respect Ottawa's authority, right?
Guns and bullets are the only "legal" currency. It's not paperwork.
Sure, but just like nobody gives a shit about what Sovereign Citizens do or do not respect, such a declaration would only carry weight if there are enough people that want to mount an armed rebellion. And despite what American influence operations would have you believe, there simply aren't. Most Albertans want to remain in Canada.
Nunavut and NWT have higher per capita numbers, but that's territory versus province:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_provinces_and...
Yukon and SK are in the >90k range, both ~5k below AB.
Show me the distribution. Show me the median not just the mean. Show me the standard deviation.
Otherwise ... abused.
Yes, we all know oil is an extremely profitable (and environmentally destructive) commodity. That doesn't make the typical Albertans somehow responsible for holding up all of confederation. Just means oil is making some people very rich. For now.
I'm from there and my family is in Alberta. I can tell you now that the oil industry ain't doing jack squat for them.
Alberta is very important economically. I'm from there. Ontario (I live there) and Quebec and BC are also massively important. And fanning the flames of disinformation and playing grievance politics to make Albertans feel discriminated against has become an extremely serious problem.
Wab Kinew was very eloquent on this topic yesterday.
When Alberta at least catches up to Quebec in practicing being independent (runs its own police, collects its own taxes, has its own pension system, maintains foreign services, ... They might decide the extra taxes to pay for such is less "fun". And they need a border to ship stuff through.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Energy_Program
> Estimates have placed Alberta's losses between $50 billion and $100 billion because of the NEP.[32][33] Alberta still initially enjoyed an economic surplus due to high oil prices, but the surplus was heavily reduced by the NEP, which, in turn, stymied many of Lougheed's policies for economic diversification to reduce Alberta's dependence on the cyclical energy industry, such as the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund, and also left the province with an infrastructure deficit. In particular, the Alberta Heritage Fund was meant to save as much of the earnings during high oil prices to act as a "rainy day" cushion if oil prices collapsed because of the cyclical nature of the oil and gas industry.
It's much the opposite, Canada just spent $34B to ensure the Trans-Mountain pipeline got built. Alberta is the one that gets the resource revenue, but it's Ottawa that has to pay for your pipelines. That's hardly fair.
Alberta has one legitimate grievance, the NEP. Which is a plan that was cancelled by Mulroney over 40 years ago.
What hurt Alberta was every cyclical crash in oil prices, and their steadfast refusal to implement additional revenue streams like a provincial sales tax while spending instead of saving their resource-boom surpluses.
This is hardly my experience as a Canadian. They're not Newfoundlanders, for crying out loud...
Sure, the new one might turn into one too, but that's no reason to stay with one who is definitely one.
Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback. That's the obvious result of Trumpism - when you seek to turn every interaction into a short-term win for you, people simply stop doing business with you whenever they can avoid it.
Tens of millions of Americans voted for this guy three times, overwhelmingly twice - this is how the country wants to act.
If he and his cronies are removed from power and prosecuted and everyone pinkie swears to never go down this road again, maybe we can look into rebuilding some of that trust. In the meantime, you reap what you sow.
Canada can't solve this problem inside US politics. Only Americans can, at any one of the three boxes. It can only work to disentangle it's critical dependencies, and to protect its own interests.
Any country can elect chucklefucks or vote for something stupid. Some of them have systems that are more resistant to the long-term damage they cause. Some of them are less. The US is definitely in the 'less' category as all of the checks and balances and systemic inertia completely collapsed.
Also, the other big difference is that when Hungary or the UK sneezes, Canada doesn't catch a cold.
>As of March 31st, 2026, Airbus reported a commercial aircraft backlog of 9,031 aircraft. Based on the company’s 2026 delivery target of 870 aircraft, this represents approximately 10.4 years of production coverage.
>Boeing’s commercial backlog stood at approximately 6,719 aircraft at the end of March. Using Forecast International’s production estimates, Boeing’s backlog equates to roughly 10.1 years of production coverage.
https://flightplan.forecastinternational.com/2026/04/14/airb...
They do not mean that the people who ordered them today are wanting them today. If you need them in 10 years time, you need to order them today. It can easily change, if a flight company doesnt want to do business with Boeing or Airbus, they can cancel their pre-orders. Then the pre-order list might shrink really fast.
..yes? Companies are still placing orders, despite knowing how long the backlog is. I also expect the 737s will still be sold in 20+ years time, much less 7-10.
Carney's Davos speech was powerful, but those words needed to be followed by actions, which I think we are seeing. I'm used to being so disappointed by politicians.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/05/21/italy-moves-to...
I guess insulting and threatening your allies isn't great for arms sales.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8qSZO4jvTI
(You can watch just the first minute to get the gist)
So it's relevant to ask if this would still be happening without Trumps antics, even isolationists like JD Vance wouldn't force our allies hands like this.
This era is over. US defense companies now need to compete for real.
Canada's aircraft industry has been on life support since long before Trump took office, having been forced to partner up with China.
The C-Series was divested to Airbus, the Dash 8 isn't produced anymore, and all Bombardier proper produces are biz-jets.
https://www.reuters.com/article/business/trump-administratio...
https://aerospaceglobalnews.com/news/pentagon-e-7-wedgetail-...
100 years from now, the last 15 months will be written about in no uncertain terms: this administration has loaded many footguns and pulled the trigger, over ideologies which are just plain stupid. "America First" indeed. Soft power is power. "Forever" wars are wars we shouldn't be in. Retribution by POTUS acting like a 5 year old is disgusting no matter what party that person came from.
It will take decades to recover from what has and will happen during this administration's run. Let's hope the power they have ends in November 2026 and not Nov 2028.
That's putting it mildly. Threatening to invade allies justifies stronger words.
And yes, most consumer goods from everywhere come from a Chinese supply chain ... but we're not talking about consumer goods here. We're talking in this case about military purchases. There aren't many western countries buying military hardware from China.
Saying that products with US based supply chains are rare does not somehow detract from the point of moving away from the ones that still exist.
And they do exist, just not for consumers, or at least not at a price most people are willing to pay.
Nobody cares if their dollar store trinket was made overseas. And nobody would buy it if it was made in America because that same trinket would cost 5x.
People barely even care about their privacy these days, it seems.
But governments still seem to care about their military independence in the rare event they are at odds with an ally.
From the article: "Saab is also in the running to sell Canada some of its Gripen fighters. Canada has a deal to buy 88 F-35 jets from Lockheed-Martin, but last year, after the US slapped tariffs on key Canadian imports, Carney asked the military to investigate whether it could cut back the order and buy some planes from another manufacturer."
Ask yourself: Why would a nation spill military secrets like this to the media? They're trying to put pressure on the US. Those Gripen fighters are in all likelihood staying in Sweden after all is said and done.
Frankly, the issues that Canada faces now stem from a long history of questionable policies, starting from when Diefenbaker shuttered the Arrow and stripped the talent and parts to be scooped up by Boeing, Lockheed et al all the way to when Mulroney & Reagan signed the FTA dooming Canada's private sector. None of this has been good for Canada's sovereignty and long term independence/success. A non-trivial amount of the SV luminaries that have started companies which highlight American inventiveness have a Canadian passport even though they don't advertise it.
The strained relationship with the US right now is actually providing ample opportunity for Canada to make some strategic long term bets without the "US foreign policy alignment" overhang. I'm optimistic.
Mulroney and Pierre Trudeau were bastards, and supremely consequential in Canadian history. Joe Clark and Paul Martin were boneheads.
Which ones Harper and Justin Trudeau are may be too soon to tell, but Carney is clearly a bastard.
[0] https://www.amazon.ca/Bastards-Boneheads-Canadas-Glorious-Le...
They are also (unfortunate?) to share a border with USA and be party to NAFTA. This makes it trivial for educated, professional Canadians to work in the US on a TN visa indefinitely. We know that the doctor and nurse brain-drain from Canada to the US has been ongoing for decades. But it's actually every industry since US firms pay 2-3x more than equivalent Canadian firms.
The reality is that Canadians get very good, tax-payer subsidized educations and then immediately go to the US to work for 10+ years and only return later when they need to start drawing on the Canadian social services for things like healthcare and family care. And Canada itself got none of the benefits of that workforce in between.
I saw a figure recently that the US issued an all-time-high 800,000 TN admissions to Canadians in 2016. And then in 2023 it surged to nearly 1.3 million.
Its actually the opposite: it had been going on for some time, but has reversed for decades, and in recent years Canada has had _increasing gains_ of medical professionals from the US.
>The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) reports annually on the number of physicians moving abroad and returning to active practice in Canada (CIHI 1996–2005). In the early to mid-1990s, net losses averaged 400 per year. More recently, the number of physicians leaving Canada has decreased significantly, resulting in net gains of between 30 to 60 per year. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2645159/#:~:text=Th...
You write this declaratively as if it describes a typical or representative case. In the 11 years I’ve lived in Canada, this isn’t representative of what I see.
The direction of migration of medical doctors likewise shows signs of reversal. I’m a physician and my wife is a surgeon. We left the U.S. over a decade ago and are constantly receiving inquiries from US physicians about immigration.
I'm assuming you were educated in Canada, and then you worked in the US (but now you don't)?
This citation is an order of magnitude off. The US doesn't really track/release visa numbers well, what you're citing might be the number of individual entries using a TN visa - visaholders go back and forth, it's not the total number of visa holders.
DHS estimates 130k Canadian visaholders in country in 2024. https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/nonimmigrant/populat...
Canada has 22m workers, so 130k working in the States is nothing like what you're claiming.
>their entire economy
Resource extraction is about ~10% of GDP, compared to 3-5% in the US and 1-2% in mainland Europe. Scandanvian countries have comparable resource extraction % of GDP. It's hardly the entire economy. It's also diversified resource extraction, it's not dependent on oil, etc. Your claim is overblown.
[0] https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/yearbook/2023/table2...
That does not remotely show what you think it does.
Meanwhile, the US continues to siphon off every Waterloo and U Toronto STEM grad to the US and American companies.
You were a magnitude off. And after your stealth edit to be admissions, you still ascribe it all to Canada. Did you know that 56% of TN visa holders are Mexican?
Something like 0.2% of Canada's working-age population holds a TN visa. It's actually kind of hilarious to compare this to your ridiculous take on this.
Bizarre. It's like having an American school me on Canadian healthcare.
Here I'm sitting, in Toronto, having hired for a number of software development teams, currently running my own operations, where every position gets an enormously deep volume of extremely capable candidates.
Shallow talent pool? Good god. Canadian technology salaries are depressed because there is an enormous volume of extremely qualified candidates for every job.
It's not hyperbolic, it's asinine bullshit. Every claim they made is factual nonsense, aside from the truth that working in specific areas of the US (silicon valley, NYC) can yield you a huge salary premium, though that is really kind of a thing of the past and this is like looking at old runes.
Sweden was forced to take their defence seriously due to their geography and political will. Canada has had an easy ride and when the going got expensive, we cancelled our domestic programs (most famously the arrow, but also a lot of other stuff).
The foreseeable future is MAGA candidates with a coin flip odds of winning indefinitely.
They're retooling because it doesn't matter who the next president is.
The only chance is if the cult spell breaks with trump, as cults rarely survive that. But it at some point it will be too late, their takeover and ability to fuck with elections means you can't vote them out anymore.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jlvb9czZFXw
[2] https://www.c-span.org/program/international-telecasts/canad...
Volvo and Polestar have their HQ in Sweden and huge manufacturing plants. They also develop platforms for some other Gealy brands including Link&co and IIRC also Zeeker.
And then there is the Koenigsegg...
Volvo have factories in Sweden, Belgium, USA, and China. The new EX60 is manufactured in Sweden. The US factory makes the EX90, XC60, Polestar 3, and until recently the S60 sedan.
Given that the market for Volvo is global, it seems to me that Volvo Cars is still overwhelmingly Swedish, while at the same time being overwhelmingly controlled by Geely.
[1]; https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/vast/1000-personer-far-lam...
But including a company that hand-builds a handful of hypercars annually in a conversation about the auto industry in Sweden is not the flex you think it is.
Then last, but not least the UK basically threw the towel in too on a wide assortment of industries, but they’re now discovering that that was a big mistake.
Although my friend was working at an injection moulding company in Christchurch that did some parts for Holden (GM) in Australia.
Apart from Volvo, Koenigsegg and Polestar and Scania. Apart from that, you’re right.
These engineers came in handy when the Industrial Revolution started.
Thus Sweden has a long history of manufacturing industry.
There are few examples where this isn't the outcome.
This has happened across Canada for well over a century, across every sphere. And in the process the Canadian input is retconned out of existence and Americans ponder why Canada "doesn't make anything". They post ignorant nonsense about how Canada is resource extraction in a trench coat or similar nonsense.
Sweden had nothing like this, and they punch way above their weight class because of this. Though that has been changing, for instance with a Chinese company buying Volvo, etc.
The only protection against this is...protectionism, whether explicit controls or implicitly by ownership or funding structures. Canada became a leader in nuclear tech by the nuclear industry basically being government owned. It became a transportation powerhouse by a government owned railway. And so on.
Change is afoot. Carney has made significant efforts to stop just sending hundreds of billions to the US and most military procurement will focus on Canadian products and innovation. Which leads to lots of gnashing and screaming by propaganda rags like the US-owned PostMedia (yup, even a lot of our media gets absorbed by the US, at least where it isn't explicitly barred from doing so).
Not entirely true. AstraZeneca and ABB are examples that remain partly Swedish but many companies were merged into big multinationals and eventually marginalised.
Then again, this is Canada - sensible decision making in military procurement just isn't something that happens here.
But the economies of scale are such that at least the $$ isn't completely out of whack (for purchase at least, maintenance I'm not so sure of). I would wager that the cost of maintaining those ancient CF-18s is pretty high now too though.
The F-15EX isn't a particularly survivable aircraft on its own. It is a plane you'd only use if you have stealth jets and you plan to do air combat at scale. It augments the capabilities of something like an F-35 but isn't something you'd add to your fleet unless you had a lot of stealth aircraft.
Canada could very well operate the F-15EX without a fleet of stealth fighters. The F-35 is not an interceptor platform in any sense of the word, in an "all out" scenario like you're suggesting it's doubtful they would be any better than the CF-18 they have today.
The modern F-18's and the new F-15's would have also made sense, but agreed that modern F-16s would seem to be a nearly perfect fit if a single engine is now deemed acceptable. Given we like to keep equipment for as long as physically possible (and then some), the F-35 might have more runway (rimshot) in that regard though.
It's like when your favourite restaurant gets taken over by new management, and you discover cockroaches and maggots in your Trenette al Pesto
You switch restaurants.
I wonder why ? I think we may be seeing a lot more of this.
Maybe we will get to see what US Corporations value more, real paying customers or large tax cuts w/stock buy back curtsy of US Gov Monetary Support.
Any time someone doesn't choose the US or moves away from the US, etc., or any time events can be remotely interpreted in that way, those stories will get submitted to and raised up to the front page of HN.
Any time someone DOES choose the US, or moves to the US, you will never, ever, ever, see a story about it on HN. They won't get submitted, and if they do, they won't get upvoted.
You only get shown the negative news that helps their agenda, and you never get shown the positive news that would hinder the picture of reality they're trying to place in your mind.
I live in a purple state (also a Canadian citizen but that's beside the point).
You could take illegal immigration as a sign that the US is a very desirable place to be. But Americans don't seem proud of that, and consider it an economic downside.
But TFA is about military hardware, and more generally about dependence on the United States. Are there any good-news stories there, with economic upsides? I think there were some about the UK, but I'm hard pressed to think of more. At most, the stories I hear are about continuing existing relationships, not forming new ones, and seem to be more about not wanting to go through the cost of changing than about feeling positively towards the US.
There are 1,000 of those everyday. They get caught by the spam filter because it would pollute the front page. The ones that don't choose USA are somewhat interesting, so they get through.
We want to see the 1% and talk about those.
[1] https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2026/05/apple-on-bill-c-22-this-...
[2] https://www.bcbc.com/insight/oecd-predicts-canada-will-be-th...
[1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-venture-cap...
[2] https://thehub.ca/2025/12/08/canada-added-950000-government-...
Or. Have you considered that the erstwhile closest military ally of the US increasingly diversifying AWAY from US programs actually is pretty noteworthy. You have had canadians boycotting US products, cancel trips to the US, their PM encouraging elbows up attitude and delivering a pretty noteworthy speech in Davos about charting a course for middle powers and you think it’s business as usual?
Whose agenda do you think this is helping, exactly?
That's because continuing as before is not a story. What a silly thing to say.