Please Ignore the Economy, The Americans May Be Coming!
Dear Prime Minister Carney,
Enough the crap already. Just stop it and tell your caucus MPs to knock it off too. Canadians deserve better. I, along with most Canadians I talk to, are genuinely disgusted by what Canadian politics has become.
Let me start with something that apparently now requires a disclaimer before common sense is permitted into the room: yes, the Canadian government should prepare for catastrophes, whether that’s war, cyberattacks, pandemics, natural disasters, terrorism, economic shocks, asteroids and comets or, hell, even an alien invasion. Governments are supposed to think about things the rest of us would reasonably file under “probably never going to happen,” including scenarios so unlikely that everybody involved hopes the planning exercise ends up gathering dust forever. That is called governing.
But there is an enormous difference between quietly preparing for an extreme possibility and irresponsibly putting that possibility in front of Canadians until people start wondering whether they should be watching the southern horizon for tanks.
And apparently we are doing the latter now.
You called the possibility of American military action against Canada an “extreme tail risk.” In other words, something considered extraordinarily unlikely but potentially catastrophic.
Fine, plan for it then. War-game it if you like. Put it in a binder thick enough to stop a bullet and lock it in whatever filing cabinet governments use for scenarios involving asteroid strikes, alien invasions and somebody successfully explaining the federal tax code.
But why are ordinary Canadians being invited into this particular nightmare?Especially now?
Because while everybody is staring south waiting for Donald Trump’s army to parachute into Canada, something considerably less hypothetical is happening right here.
The Canadian economy isn’t exactly bounding through the meadow with a ribbon in its hair like you touted, now, is it And guess what’s actually more interesting?
On June 3, you stood in the House of Commons defending Canada’s economic performance and told Pierre Poilievre that if he wanted an answer, he could “ask the OECD,” which was forecasting Canada to have the second-strongest G7 economy that year and the next.
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne invoked the OECD forecasts too. The OECD had become something of an international report card pinned proudly to the Liberal refrigerator. You touted it as proof “the plan is working!”
Then September arrived.
On September 15, just eight days before the OECD released its newest forecast, you were still standing in front of international investors at the Canada Investment Summit declaring that “Canada is projected to have the second-fastest growth in the G7 this year and next.” This wasn’t some stale quote I had to excavate from six months ago. Your own office published it eight days before the new numbers arrived.
As recently as September 15, 2026 you were still telling international investors that Canada was projected to have the second-fastest growth in the G7 this year and next.
Eight days later, the OECD released its forecast, and guess what? Canada isn’t second anymore, and that’s the part Canadians shouldn’t miss here.
For months, your government repeatedly held up that second-place forecast as proof that Conservatives were exaggerating Canada’s economic problems. Your Finance Minister called it good news… multiple times! In the House of Commons, when Pierre Poilievre challenged you over Canada’s economic performance, you actually told him he could “ask the OECD.”
Well, newsflash… we did ask. And guess what the OECD has to say? The OECD downgraded Canada’s 2026 growth forecast, and Canada is now projected to grow more slowly than the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom.
Your government chose the referee, your government pointed us toward the scoreboard, and now the scoreboard has changed, just Like Pierre Poilievre said it would.
And, frankly, I still don’t know when second place became something worth bragging about in the first place. This government keeps promising Canadians the strongest economy in the G7. Strongest means first. You don’t get to promise Canadians the gold medal and then throw yourself a parade for silver.
But now even the silver medal is gone. We’re fourth now. What medal comes with that? My, how quickly the international report card loses its starring role once the grades change.
And on that very same date, September 23, Canadians suddenly found themselves discussing something considerably more cinematic:
American troops on Canadian soil. Come on now… seriously?!
I wanted to know where this whole thing actually started, because apparently this is where we are now. The trail leads back to January 20.
That was when Robert Fife and Gavin John at The Globe and Mail reported that the Canadian Armed Forces had modelled a hypothetical American invasion and Canada’s possible response.
This was not some military press conference where a general marched up to a microphone and announced Operation Everybody Panic.
The Globe reported the information based on two senior government officials, along with a senior Defence Department official. None of them were named. The Globe said the two government officials were not authorized to discuss the military’s thinking publicly, and the senior Defence official was also unnamed because that person was not authorized to discuss Canadian war-modelling scenarios.
And this is precisely why Canadians should demand names attached to extraordinary claims whenever possible. Anonymous sources may sometimes be necessary, but anonymity also means Canadians cant examine who is speaking, what authority they actually have, what their motives might be or why they decided the public needed to hear this. If you’re going to put something as serious as a hypothetical American invasion into the national conversation, I think Canadians are entitled to ask who put it there. The modelling was conceptual, not an operational military plan, and the officials and experts quoted in the story stressed that an American invasion was unlikely.
That matters, because Canadians didn’t learn about this military modelling because the Armed Forces publicly decided Canadians needed to know.
We learned because people inside government and Defence discussed non-public military thinking with reporters.
▪︎ So, who decided to have those conversations and why?
▪︎ Was the disclosure authorized somewhere else?
▪︎ Was somebody trying to send a message or just distract Canadians?
▪︎ Was somebody trying to prepare Canadians psychologically for a changing relationship with the United States?
I don’t know, and I don’t believe any of us ever will. And unless somebody involved decides to explain it, neither does the Canadian public. But those are perfectly reasonable questions.
Then the story largely faded from everyday Canadian conversation. Eight months passed and now we know something else about how an American invasion returned to the national conversation.
The New York Times did not simply sit there while you spontaneously announced that you had been contemplating an American invasion. Its journalists asked you about it.
They were following up on that January reporting and pressed you about whether you took Trump’s repeated 51st-state rhetoric seriously. That distinction matters too. You may not have manufactured the question, but you certainly did choose how to answer it.
You could have said the Canadian military routinely examines remote contingencies, that responsible governments prepare for unlikely scenarios, and that you weren’t going to elevate an extraordinarily improbable military scenario into something Canadians should worry about.
But you didn’t. Instead, Canadians learned that you personally had considered the possibility of American military action against Canada and regarded it as an “extreme tail risk.” And just like that, American invasion was news again.
I don’t blame you for preparing for it. I question the wisdom of helping turn something you yourself describe as an extreme tail risk into another object of public anxiety when Canadians already have quite enough things happening at considerably shorter odds. This ranks right up there with how you scared some Canadians into believing Trump didn’t want people speaking French in Canada anymore when you suddenly bolted from trade negotiations citing an attack on the French language. Then you irresponsibly let people’s imaginations run rampant. For crying out loud, there were tik toks circulating by Liberal creators claiming Trump was trying to end French in Canada…. you did that!
And so, while politicians and commentators debate hypothetical American troops crossing the border, Canadians are dealing with problems that have already arrived.
Meanwhile, Canadian parents are standing in grocery aisles mentally repossessing half their cart before they even reach the checkout, people are practically begging for overtime just to make rent, and workers are watching layoffs ripple through entire industries wondering whether tomorrow morning it’s their turn. That’s the Canada people are actually living in while Ottawa keeps rummaging through the geopolitical costume closet looking for the next thing we’re supposed to be terrified of.
According to a June United Way Centraide Canada/Léger poll, 46 per cent of people in Canada said they could cover basic expenses for only one month or less before falling into debt. Forty per cent said they were losing sleep over stretching their paycheque, and 60 per cent reported financial anxiety.
Those aren’t tail risks Carney… that’s an average Monday now in Canada. We’re about two price increases away from Canadians pulling off their socks in aisle seven because they’ve run out of fingers and need their toes to finish calculating if buying milk will break the bank.
And somehow, right on cue, the national conversation has wandered straight back to Trump, America, annexation and invasion... fear, basically. Different headline, same tired little panic button, pressed so often I’m surprised the lettering hasn’t worn off like it does on the volume button of the tv remote.
I’ve watched this political trick for quite some time. Apparently, there is always some fresh catastrophe crouched just beyond the next ballot box that, by an astonishing coincidence, can only be prevented by voting Liberal.
Abortion rights? They’ll be taken away. Climate change? Catastrophe awaits. Conservatives? Hide the silverware. Trump? Apparently lurking behind every maple tree. The civil service? Mass firings. And now we’ve apparently reached the natural conclusion of this travelling production: American tanks. At this rate, by the next election I fully expect Godzilla to cross the Ambassador Bridge wearing a MAGA hat.
There is always another emergency just terrifying enough that Canadians are supposed to stop asking irritating little questions about jobs, investment, productivity, food prices, housing, taxes, deficits and why everything costs more than it did yesterday.
And somehow, plenty of Liberal voters keep falling for it while simultaneously reminding everyone that Liberals are more educated, more informed and, naturally, the smartest people in any given room. That may be the part that irritates me most. If you’re going to spend every election obediently panicking over whatever fresh apocalypse your party has wheeled onto the stage, perhaps hold off on awarding yourself the intellectual superiority trophy until you’ve checked whether you’re being played.
Governments are supposed to prepare for ridiculous possibilities. The United States Centers for Disease Control once famously used a zombie apocalypse as an attention-grabbing way to teach ordinary emergency preparedness.
Honestly, perhaps Canada should steal the concept. Prepare for everything. Invasion, cyberwarfare, earthquakes, another pandemic... throw in an asteroid strike while we’re at it. Aliens? Sure. Lizard people tunnelling underneath Parliament Hill? Put somebody on it. Hell, dust off the CDC zombie manual and stick that in the emergency binder too. I dont care what ridiculous catastrophe somebody wants to prepare for. Prepare away, just stop confusing preparedness with politics and treating Canadians like turnips who’ve had a recent tumble from the back of a truck.
And while we’re discussing how fear travels through Canadian politics, we should probably talk about Charlie Angus. Because somewhere along the way, the former NDP MP became one of the country’s loudest Trump-apocalypse town criers.
After the January military-modelling story appeared, the invasion theme increasingly became part of Angus’s public commentary. Through his work with Meidas Canada, he has repeatedly discussed the probability of American aggression, Canadian resistance and the threat posed by Trump.
This is where the incredulity writes itself. Angus has spent considerable time encouraging Canadians to ‘Buy Canadian,’ boycott American products and resist American political influence.
Meanwhile, he deliberately partnered with MeidasTouch, an American-founded political media network, to launch Meidas Canada. Apparently American influence becomes considerably less threatening once somebody hands you a microphone.
Then there is Laura Babcock and the Oshow, where the Trump-threat narrative has also been feverishly promoted, ad nauseam at shrieking decibel levels. Sadly, anyone watching her program is merely cementing their biases and assumptions that blondes, women in particular, are dumb and Canadian women are hysterical lunatics unfit for serious conversation because they'll believe anything.😒
And somewhere between the podcasts, resistance branding, invasion discussions, sovereignty warnings and breathless declarations about what Trump will do next, an extremely remote contingency starts sounding less like contingency planning and more like the trailer for a movie Canadians are apparently required to watch every few months when the PM’s popularity starts tanking and inconvenient information dares surface. There is no tolerance for unintentionally revealing the unpleasant truth that contradicts the mighty Mark Carney publicly. Call it Accidental Transparency to the peasants! Quick… we need a distraction…
It’s here, at this point where I lose all patience with some of my fellow Canadians. Because there are Canadians who have enough financial padding to spend an afternoon debating Donald Trump’s latest outrage without wondering whether the hydro payment is going to bounce. Terrific, good for them, how marvelous!
But then there are also Canadians living one ugly week away from financial disaster. Their problems are real, they are here, they are happening now, and they are multiplying faster than people can possibly adjust to them.
Those Canadians dont need another politician pointing dramatically toward the horizon and warning them which monster might eventually crawl over it. They need somebody to deal with the problems already sitting at their kitchen table, eating their grocery money and asking when the mortgage is due.
And now there’s another political reality approaching: six federal seats are vacant and awaiting by-elections, including mine here in Yorkton–Melville. I am bereft of an MP, along with Canadians in five other ridings waiting to choose who will represent them in Ottawa.
So while Canada’s political and media classes clutch their pearls over an “extreme tail risk,” people here are busy surviving the risks that actually showed up: disappearing jobs, brutal grocery bills, struggling farms, trade uncertainty and the increasingly absurd cost of simply keeping the lights on, the fridge stocked and the bank from owning the roof over your head. No war games required. These problems are already here.
And that is why I, along with a large growing number of Canadians are increasingly exhausted and disgusted with government-by-fear. Prepare for Trump, Putin, Xi, an asteroid, or zombies if somebody at National Defence has a slow Thursday. Prepare for every conceivable catastrophe if that’s the job. But for the love of God, somewhere between the war games and the apocalypse binders, could somebody actually govern the country Canadians are living in right now? Because another bad economic report should not automatically result in somebody reaching for the emergency hammer.
Apparently, this is the emergency procedure now: bad economic report, break glass, deploy Trump, wait for mass public hysteria to distract, move forward in a pseudo shawl of virtuous righteousness.
You told us to ask the OECD. Well, we did. Unfortunately, the referee you spent months pointing at has a different score. Which leaves me wondering how many monsters Mark “Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain” Carney has left in the basement before Canadians finally start looking for Toto. Because eventually, you run out. You can only haul Trump onto the scene so many times, crank up the smoke machine and shout about the terrifying thing on the horizon before somebody notices the curtain moving.
Eventually there won’t be a fresh catastrophe handy enough, a Conservative-shaped object throwable enough, or an American bogeyman enormous enough to keep blocking the view of what’s happening right here at home.
And when the smoke finally clears, there you will be Mark. No booming voice, no terrifying projection, no Donald Trump left to deploy. Just Mark Carney standing behind the curtain with the little red emergency hammer in his hand, broken glass all over the floor, and Canadians staring back at him.
So I’m curious: how many times can this government yell “Trump!” before Canadians stop looking south and start looking at Ottawa? Because when that happens, there’s only one monster left in the room: the Liberal government record.
As always,
Melanie in Saskatchewan