Canada-USA Relations

Friday April 17, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday April 17, 2020

Canada to keep border restrictions with U.S. for long time: Trudeau

Coronavirus cartoons

Canada’s border restrictions with the United States will remain in place “for a significant time” as the two nations fight the coronavirus outbreak, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Thursday.

Washington and Ottawa agreed last month to clamp down on non-essential travel while allowing massive trade flows to continue across their long shared frontier.

“There’s a recognition that as we move forward there will be special thought given to this relationship. But at the same time we know that there is a significant amount of time, still, before we can talk about loosening such restrictions,” Trudeau told a daily briefing.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday told reporters the two nations were “doing well” and said, “It will be one of the early borders to be released.”

The two nations’ economies are highly integrated, and allowing trade to continue avoided major problems for the auto sector as well as the transportation of food and medicines.

 



Part of a Politico package featuring Canadian cartoonists

 

Although Trudeau’s government has enjoyed good relations with the Trump administration over the last 18 months, tensions still remain. Last month, Ottawa slammed a U.S. proposal to deploy troops along the border to fight the spread of the novel coronavirus, prompting Washington to drop the plan.

A total of 1,048 people in Canada had died from the coronavirus by 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT), slightly less than 10% higher than the death toll a day ago, official data posted by the public health agency showed.

The total number of those diagnosed with the coronavirus had climbed to 28,899. The respective figures at the same time on Wednesday were 954 deaths and 27,540 positive diagnoses.

Medical officials now expect the death toll to be between 1,200 and 1,620 by April 21, Theresa Tam, the chief public health officer, told a briefing.

She repeated comments she made on Wednesday about being cautiously optimistic the outbreak could be slowing down. (The Province) 


 

“Dear Leader’s latest initiative is to sign an executive order banning all immigration, and we can let the courts sort the legality of that out, but, in the meantime, those outside the US may be looking at it the way Canadian Graeme MacKay views living in a nation with intelligent leadership versus the one that is right across the border.”

Here’s an unauthorized version of the April 17, 2020 cartoon which found its way circulating through social media several months after originally posted. Obviously, it isn’t printable in mainstream media, and essentially puts words into the creator’s mouth which is never appreciated.  Whomever the mystery person is behind the re-adaptation gets a Social Media Jackass designation. Folks, remember, artistic work should never be manipulated, unless permission is granted by the artist.  

Thursday June 27, 2013

Thursday June 27, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday June 27, 2013

Obama muddies the debate on Keystone Pipeline

Observers are trying to figure out just what President Barack Obama is signalling when it comes to the Keystone XL pipeline, but some still expect it will get the go-ahead.

What the president said yesterday is that the massive project will be approved only if it “does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.”

What he meant depends on who you listen to, given that supporters and opponents alike said they were buoyed by his comments on the proposed pipeline, which would carry some one million barrels a day of Alberta crude to the Gulf coast.

Which suggests, of course, that the situation remains as confused as it ever was.

“In short, the speech raised more questions than it answered about a piece of infrastructure that is undoubtedly of tremendous importance to the Canadian economy and to ongoing U.S. energy policy – and one whose future is still a matter of public policy debate in the U.S.,” said economists Derek Holt and Dov Zigler of Bank of Nova Scotia.

As The Globe and Mail’s Paul Koring and Steven Chase report, Keystone XL figured prominently as the president unveiled his climate change policy in Washington.

A decision on the TransCanada Corp. project is expected later this year. It has already been rejected once, forcing the Canadian company to change the planned route to skirt an environmentally sensitive region in Nebraska.

Analysts say the project is crucial for Canada amid stubborn pipeline constraints. Economists at CIBC World Markets calculate that Canada would lose out on a potential $50-billion over a three-year period because of those troubles. (Source: The Globe & Mail)

Wednesday June 12, 2013

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday June 12, 2013

Data-collection program not targeting Canadians

Defence Minister Peter MacKay says Canada’s own secretive online and phone metadata surveillance program is “prohibited” from looking at the information of Canadians and is directed at monitoring foreign threats.

Peter Mackay GalleryMacKay responded Monday to a Globe and Mail report that stated he had approved a program in 2011 that tracks the data surrounding online activity and phone calls searching for suspicious activity, but not the messages themselves.

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair asked MacKay in question period on Monday if the Conservatives were monitoring the phone and email records of Canadians.

The program was initially brought in by the former Liberal government in 2005, but was later put on hiatus over concerns it could lead to warrantless surveillance of Canadians. The Globe reports the program was quietly reinstated on Nov. 21, 2011 after MacKay signed a ministerial directive, which is not subject to parliamentary scrutiny.

Under the Anti-Terrorism Act, only the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), which is an arm of the Department of National Defence, can actually eavesdrop or monitor online communications.

It is believed that the Canadian program is used to monitor metadata both domestically and internationally. That means the CSEC could look at information such as email paths, senders and recipients, IP addresses and phone connections — data that could help identify potential criminal networks or potential terrorist groups. But actual messages exchanged between individuals in those networks would be off limits unless a warrant was obtained. (Source: CTV News)

Saturday, June 1, 2013

Saturday, June 1, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, June 1, 2013

The Battle of Stoney Creek: Red coats to the Rescue

For SaleThe Battle of Stoney Creek is regarded as one of the most important events in Canadian history. Despite the fact it took place 200 years ago, visitors to Battlefield Park in Stoney Creek got a chance to step back in time on the weekend to experience what it might have been like that early morning of June 6, 1813 when 700 British regulars from the King’s (8th) Regiment of Foot and the 49th Regiment of Foot and a small contingent of native warriors advanced from the site of what is now Dundurn Castle to surprise 3,500 American troops who were camped at the Gage family homestead (where Battlefield Park is now located). After an intense 40-minute battle, the British captured two American generals and two field guns. The Americans were forced to retreat, never to advance as far into the Niagara Peninsula again.

Close to 700 re-enactors from as far away as Wisconsin, Thunder Bay and the Maritimes re-created the famous battle to the delight of thousands of spectators. There were cannons, musket fusillades and even period music demonstrations in the main field of the park (where the actual battle took place). Situated throughout the rest of the park were more than 30 vendors specializing in period goods and historical demonstrations of what life would have been like at an encampment in the War of 1812.

Despite the less than ideal weather this year, organizers were expecting the 200th anniversary edition of what is the longest continually run War of 1812 re-enactment in North America, would double last year’s numbers of 10,000 visitors over the course of the weekend. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Wednesday, March 20, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Thomas Mulcair’s anti-Keystone rhetoric

Tom Mulcair got himself elected leader of the federal New Democratic Party on a promise he would bring hard-headed realism and a centrist political ethic to the job. He was to be, it was murmured at the time, the NDP’s Tony Blair.

As it turns out, there’s little indeed of Blair’s famous economic pragmatism in Mulcair. He talks the talk but, when push comes to shove, quacks like a duck. Currently, the NDP leader is tromping with big, gnarled feet all over the delicate buds of the Keystone XL pipeline. Criticism of his criticisms, while on a recent Washington D.C. trip, he dismisses as Conservative hypocrisy. All opposition leaders attack the governing party’s positions when travelling overseas!

Except, that Keystone and the issues tied to it are not just political baubles to be toyed with. These are fundamental, shared economic problems – the greatest Canadians now face. The Obama administration’s pending approval or rejection will affect us all from coast to coast to coast, for many years to come. And much of Mulcair’s rhetoric about Keystone is either poorly researched, half-true or spun-up by ideological assumptions that do not hold up for a second in the cold light of day.

First let’s address the idea that Alberta’s nefarious Big Oil oligarchs are foisting oilsands development on a reluctant Eastern Canada, whose citizens will only suffer as the resultant global warming turns James Bay into a gigantic hot tub. This is the putative value proposition: Albertans benefit economically from the oilsands, but the rest of us are harmed. Why should their interests subsume ours? (Source: National Post)