Trudeau ready to meet Trump (and Mexicans) to renegotiate USMCA

During President Trump's first term, the US of A entered into negotiations with Canada and Mexico to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which the President called a "terrible deal". While the Donald frequently expressed his love for Canada, he took aim at Prime Minister Blackie McBlackface, calling him "two faced", "weak", and a "far-left lunatic."

The result was the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which replaced NAFTA, effective in 2020. 

This past August, as the campaign for the 2024 election started to heat up, President Trump said, "I terminated NAFTA. That's a pretty big thing. A lot of people said it would be impossible to do. I got it done, and we have a great deal now. What we have to do is make it much better even, and we'll be able to do that very shortly."

Just three weeks prior to his landslide victory, President Trump vowed to renegotiate the USMCA.  "I am announcing today that upon taking office, I will formally notify Mexico and Canada of my intention to invoke the six-year renegotiation provisions of the USMCA that I put in," he told the Detroit Economic Club.

The USMCA agreement is up for review on its sixth anniversary [not "six-year anniversay"! Ed.], when the three countries will have to confirm in writing if they wish to extend the pact or re-evaluate it. "That was the hardest thing I had to get, they didn't want that," Mr Trump said of the unique review clause. "I said, 'Nope, I want to be able to renegotiate in six years, otherwise we're not making the deal.' And I got it, and it's coming due very soon. Oh, I'm going to have a lot of fun." 

President Trump said he wanted to better protect and promote the American auto industry, which has long been centred in Detroit. "I'll also seek strong new protections against transgender ["transshipment" shurely, Ed.] so that China and other countries cannot smuggle their products and auto parts into the United States tax-free through Mexico to the detriment of our workers and our supply chains. They smuggle this stuff in. They don't pay anything. We're going to have very strong language on that."

Car-makers and car-buyers, stay tuned!

One thing Still-President Trump got absolutely right

There are many Americans [but surely not 50%! Ed.] who absolutely refuse to give Still-President Trump credit for a single thing that he did or tried to do to Make America Great Again. If he walked across the pool at his Florida estate they'd say he doesn't know how to swim! It's a pity that more Americans, especially the anti-Trumpers, didn't read The Expendables, by Jeff Rubin (PenguinRandomHouse 2020).

Ed. says that maybe the book didn't make a big splash in the Excited States of America because Jeff Rubin is a Canadian, and Americans just don't listen to Canadians. But Mr Rubin is not your typical Canuck milquetoast liberal. He is a world-leading expert on trade and energy, and former chief economist and chief strategist at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce World Markets, and recently served as a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. 

So Mr Rubin knows a thing or three about economics, and about the adverse effects of globalism and globalization, as promoted by George Soros and all the other Volvo liberals behind the campaign to turf President Trump out of office. They think globalism is wonderful, and why wouldn't they... it made them rich! But Jeff Rubin begs to differ.

The subtitle of The Expendables says it all. It reads: How the middle class got screwed by globalization. Our Agent 17, a member of said middle class, complained to me years ago (BT) that "China is eating our lunch." He was right. And the liberals made that happen! 

Through the World Trade Organization and trade deals like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership -- all endorsed and promoted by the Prez and Mr and Mrs Clinton -- tariffs were lowered to the point of being non-existent, and millions of well-paying manufacturing jobs were off-shored to places like Mexico ("that great sucking sound"), Vietnam, Bangladesh and, of course, China.

What happened? The owners of multinational corporations like Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Walmart, etc etc, got rich beyond the dreams of avarice, while the American (and Canadian and OECD) middle class actually shrank. 

But, the liberals say, the poor people -- below middle class -- became better off. Not true, says Mr Rubin. More people than ever are working in McJobs and the gig economy, rather than steady well-paying jobs in industry. And because wages have been stagnant while profits grow, their standard of living has actually declined, as witness the growing numbers of those "experiencing homelessness" -- living in cars and RVs even in supposedly prosperous areas like Silicon Valley.  

What Donald Trump did right, but gets little or no credit for, was to put the brakes on globalization, by getting the US of A out of rotten trade deals like NAFTA and the Obama-sponsored TPP. He also lowered taxes to encourage the multinationals to bring their manufacturing plants back to America, while at the same time raising tariffs to make it less profitable to import cheap manufactured goods from countries which are America's enemies.

Is it any wonder that the business interests for whom Sleepy Joe Biden fronts wanted to put Mr Trump out of office? The President was throwing a monkey-wrench into the machinery of  globalization. He was upsetting the plan of  Soros & Co. to make America second-rate, economically as well as politically. He was trying to Make America Great Again! 

In closing let me quote one short passage from The Expendables. 

History warns us that when monopolistic control falls into the hands of the few (who make massive fortunes as a result), someone is getting scrwed.

Some commentators have suggested that the CEOs of today's tech giants -- Apple's Tim Cook, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon's Jeff Bezos, to name a few -- are the robber barons of our age. Their modern-day uniform of jeans and T-shirts may not scream "money" the way the three-piece suits and top hats of Rockefeller and his cohort did, but their enormous wealth dwarfs the riches of their nineteenth-century predecessors....

All of these CEOs are good at what they do. And what they do best is manipulate public governance in ways that the early twentieth-century global oil industry could only dream of. In the United States, where most of them are based, they have supported the establishment wing of the Democratic Party -- the same wing that was in power for eight years under President Obama [and Vice-President Biden. Walt] 

They've been outspoken on climate change, racial tolerance, gender equity, and all of the other hot button issues of American liberalism. But at the same time, the efforts to prove their liberal bona fides have helped protect this group from something they care far more deeply about: government regulation of the monopolies that have made them all multibillionaires.

"Gee, Walt," I hear some of you say, "Why didn't you tell us this before we voted?" Unfortunately I didn't start reading The Expendables until yesterday. But it's not like others weren't warning that the good works of the Trump presidency would be undone by the Democrats, once the likes of Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and the Squad get their hands on the levers of power.

Old Joe Biden himself promised that he would take care of the Obama administration's unfinished business, reverse the tax cuts, put America back in the Paris Accord and other globalist institutions, and generally turn back the clock to 2008. If you weren't paying attention and voted for him, you're about to learn, the hard way, why changing leaders and policies in the middle of an economic crisis was a baaaaad idea.

40 Republicans call on POTUS to remove "gay protection" from USMCA

Negotiations to rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), dragged on for well over a year before culminating this fall in a new US-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA). The problem was the insistence of Canada's progressive, feminist Prime Minister Just In Trudeau, that any new agreement be a model of liberal ideology, putting social justice and the progressive agenda ahead of business and prosperity.

Mr Socks sent his lead negotiator, a former journalist named Chrystia Freeland, to the meetings with a shopping list of "non-negotiable demands" including new policies on climate change, gender equity, indigenous rights and other issues largely irrelevant to free trade, including (of course) measures to advance the liberal pro-queer agenda and protect "gay rights".

The USA and Mexico finally tired of being nagged about these non-issues and concluded an agreement on their own. See "Payback for the Lady in Red - Trump set to stick it to Canada", WWW 28/8/18.

Faced with the prospect of being cut loose, the Canucks caved on a couple of the real issues -- the auto sector and supply management in their dairy industry -- and the new USMCA (aka NAFTA v2) was hastily signed. Cue sighs of relief in Ottawa and a certain amount of behind-the-hand snickering in Washington and Mexico City.

As a sop to the Canadian snowflakes, the new agreement includes a pledge that all three countries will support "policies that protect workers against employment discrimination on the basis of sex, including with regard to pregnancy, sexual harassment, sexual orientation, gender identity." Now that they've gotten around to reading the fine print, dozens of Republican lawmakers have noticed this clause and, on Friday, pronounced themselves unhappy with it.

According to POLITICO, 40 conservative congresspeople [Ed., is that what we're supposed to call them now?] have signed their names to a letter to President Trump urging him not to sign the agreement unless that language is removed.

Among the signatories are House Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and Rep. Diane Black (R-TN), a member of the Ways and Means Committee. The coalition said the United States "has the right to decide when, whether and how to tackle issues of civil rights, protected classes and workplace rights" as a sovereign nation.

"A trade agreement is no place for the adoption of social policy," the letter continues. "It is especially inappropriate and insulting to our sovereignty to needlessly submit to social policies which the United States Congress has so far explicitly refused to accept."

Another signatory, Republican Doug Lamborn, has expressed concern congressional approval for USMCA could set a precedent “for activist courts” and he said in a statement Friday that Trump needed to remove the “troubling language … adopted behind the scenes.”

Before it can be put into effect, the new deal must be approved by Congress, but Friday's letter suggests POTUS could lose some Republican support for the agreement unless changes are made. In an interview with POLITICO, Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) referred to "troubling language...adopoted behind the scenes" and said "This is language that is going to cause a lot of people to reconsider their support of the trade agreement, and to the point that it may endanger the passage of the trade agreement unless something is done."

Walt agrees completely. The mere suggestion that America should base its labour and related policies on the liberal model lwhich is failing spectatularly in Sweden, the United Kingdom and, yes, Canada is nothing short of ridiculous. Let Americans -- and only Americans -- decide how to run the US of A. If Canada (and Mexico) want to play in the American league, they're going to have to play by American league rules!

Further reading (and viewing): "CBC stunned by American prof's criticism of Chrystia Freeland", WWW 9/9/18. Includes video.

VIDEO: CBC stunned by American prof's criticism of Chrystia Freeland

About three months before WWW made its debut in the blogosphere, Walt had the pleasure of meeting with the delectable Reshmi Nair, who was then a rookie bingo-caller with Canada's CTV News. Ms Nair went on to bigger and better (?) things. Having drunk multiple doses of liberal Koolaid, she is now occupies an anchor's chair at Wallyworld [Newsworld, shurely! Ed.], the CBC's answer to the Clinton News Network.

Canada's state broadcaster evidently equips its staff with powerful PC filters which protect them from seeing or hearing truths which conflict with the prevailing liberal orthodoxy. That, at any rate, is the opinion of Frank H. Buckley, Foundation Professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. He joined The Rebel's Ezra Levant last week to discuss his recent appearance on the CBC where he criticized the Liberals' incompetence during the NAFTA negotiations.

That Professor Buckley should lay much of the blame for the Trudeau Liberals' failure to get a deal with the USA at the feet of the poster girl for gender equity, the Honourable Chrystia Freeland, comes as no surprise to me, since I've been saying the same things for some time now. I've also questioned the reasons for the Canadian Broadcorping Castration's love affair with the fragrant (and sometimes braless) Ms Freeland. Check out these posts:
"Questioning the CBC's love affair with Chrystia Freeland", WWW 8/10/17
"Canuck foreign minister Freeland skips 5th round of NAFTA talks", WWW 16/11/17
"MOR Canuck pundit blames Liberals for NAFTA talks impasse", 1/9/18

Today's questions:
How much longer will the Canadian people have to suffer for the naïveté and ineptitude of their Liberal government? Answer: With luck, just another 13 months.
Can it get worse? Answer: Yes. Right now no-one (in said government) thinks President Trump is going to make good his threat to scupper NAFTA. Just wait.
Could it get even worse? Answer: Again, yes. It's entirely possible that the Canadian sheeple may be gulled by the CBC and other lamestream meeja into believing that failure to get a trade deal is actually a victory for Mr Socks in that he stood up the Orange Monster from Down South, with the result that they re-elect him and the insufferable Ms Freeland.

That's enough horrible questions. Thank you for clarifying the muddification. Ed.

MOR Canuck pundit blames Liberals for NAFTA talks impasse

The NAFTA renegotiation between the Excited States of America and the Dominion of Canada (yes, that's its proper title) is not going well. The Canuck Minister of Global/Foreign/External Affairs (or whatever it's called today) appeared at her country's embassy in Washington yesterday to indicate through body language if not unequivocal words that things are, errr, stalled.

Andrew Coyne, a middle-of-the-road-hugging columnist for Canada's somewhat National Post, had something to say about the NAFTA talks and who's responsible for the Mexican standoff (pun intended), in "The Trudeau Liberals fall to earth...". Here's the relevant excerpt:

And then there's the Liberals' trade agenda. In one arena after another — China, the Trans Pacific Partnership, and especially the NAFTA renegotiations — the Liberals appear to have genuinely believed they could impose their own bleeding-edge social-justice agenda on that of their negotiating partners, transforming blueprints for managing international commercial relations — difficult enough at the best of times — into sweeping progressive manifestos. Each time they were rebuffed but without apparently learning any lessons in the process.

NAFTA may yet be salvaged, but if so it will not be for any of the Liberals' doing. It's probably too strong to blame the perilous state of the talks on the failings of Liberal negotiating strategy — Donald Trump is simply not a rational actor — but it's equally hard to see how they have helped, from their intransigence on issues that ought to have been bargaining chips, like supply management, to getting visibly outhustled by the Mexicans.

Further reading:
"Trump Hits Canada Over Trade Talks: U.S. Shouldn’t Have to 'Buy' Allies with 'Bad' Deals", Breitbart News, 1/9/18.
"Payback for the Lady in Red - Trump set to stick it to Canada", WWW 28/8/18.

Footnote: Agent 3 saw video of Ms Freeland's presser on the CBC, which runs Freeland clips at every opportunity, and claims she was not wearing a bra. Walt asks, hasn't No. 3 heard of the legal maxim "De minimis non curat lex?" WTF is wrong with you, 3?!

Payback for the Lady in Red - Trump set to stick it to Canada

As the picture above shows, the Honourable Chrystia Freeland, Canada's Minister of Global/Foreign/External/Whatever Affairs, is a natural-born diplomat. So much so that, last June, Foreign Policy magazine, the voice of the one-world crowd, gave her its Diplomat of the Year award, which she travelled to Washington to accept.

Today, even as I write, the talented and fragrant "Lady in Red" is jetting down to the nation's capital [It's not in Richmond any more? Ed.] for an emergency meeting with... well... whoever in the American administration is willing (or obliged) to talk to her about free trade. Yesterday, President Trump (hahaha, liberals!) announced the demise of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the beginning of a new US-Mexico trade agreement. Canada is to be shut out of what was supposed to be a three-way deal, and now it's up to Ms Freeland to get America's second-biggest trading partner back in there.

Ms Freeland's skills as a negotiator are well known, and have been discussed in WWW before. As reported here in October of 2016, her ass in the hole [Please use your spell-checker. Ed.], played at a meeting to discuss a Canada-EU trade agreement, is throwing a hissy fit and storming out of the meeting room to tell the meeja "These people are impossible! I'm going home to my children!" Amazingly, the obstreporous Belgians (the objects of her feminist wrath) went for it and got the meeting going again, although the agreement in principle has yet to be ratified.

That's just one example of Ms Freeland's fine feminist SJW form. Like Hellery Clinton, she does not hesitate to diss anyone who disagrees with the enlightened and progressive principles which she shares with her boss, Canuck Prime Minister Just In Trudeau. It was the lovely Chrystia who insisted that gender equity, indigenous rights and climate change be included in any new North American free trade pact. Why the Americans and Mexicans didn't put anything in their new agreement about those important issues is undoubtedly a mystery to her.

Like Mrs Bill Clinton, Ms Freeland is one of those who lay the blame for all the world's troubles at the feet of President Trump. Without actually calling him "deplorable", she managed to infuriate him by the foreign policy speech she delivered while accepting the award mentioned above. In the speech, she directly addressed Americans in the room, raising "concerns" about the direction the United States has been taking under the Trump administration. She criticized America's approach to international relations, including NATO, tariffs and trade.

According to people who should know, both President Trump and Robert Lighthizer, the lead American trade negotiataor, viewed the speech as an insult, not only targeting administration publicly but doing so on their turf in Washington. Worse, the speech came hard on the heels of the acrimonious and unproductive G7 meetings in Charlevoix QC. It will be remembered that in the closing presser, M Trudeau said he'd had good meetings with President Trump et al. Then, only minutes after Mr Trump's plane had lifted off, Mr Socks said Canada would not be bullied, yada yada yada!

The White House was not fond of Chrystia Freeland even before her speech. The President's staff and allies dislike her, her policy positions (gender equity???), and her negotiating style ("These people are impossible!"). So they made Canada pay for Ms Freeland's feminist rants, by disinviting the Canucks from recent meetings. See "While Canuck minister plays SJW, USA and Mexico near NAFTA deal", WWW 11/8/18.

Senior government officials in Ottawa insist they're not worried about Ms Freeland's having got her tits in the wringer, saying the deal is far bigger than personalities. In their liberal smugness, they actually think the "Lady in Red" is only disliked because she has been so relentless in bluntly pushing forward Canadian interests, such as, errr, indigenous rights and, errr, gender equity, and [That's enough Canadian interests. Ed.]

The Liberal government and its apologists in the state-owned CBC are telling worried Canadians that this could be the most critical week yet in NAFTA negotiations and that a deal could be done by the end of the week. Walt will take that bet. Lifetime pct .989.

Further reading: "Questioning the CBC's love affair with Chrystia Freeland", WWW 8/10/17. Spoiler alert! The link to Ms Freeland's disastrous appearance with Bill Maher, in which her biases and ignorance were revealed to an incredulous public, doesn't work. YouTube has deleted that video. Any suggestion that pressure from the Trudeau government had anything to do with its disappearance is, of course, completely unfounded.

While Canuck minister plays SJW, USA and Mexico near NAFTA deal

Canadian investors and businesspeople are chewing their nails, waiting and hoping for their federal government (Just In Trudeau, Prop.) to get serious about reaching a deal with the Paranoid States of America (and maybe Mexico) to renew the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The economies of the Land of the Somewhat Free and the Great No-longer-white North are so intertwined that a reversion to the status quo ante would be disastrous for Canada, less so for the USA. Canucks are worried about the possible failure of negotiations, Americans... not so much.

Chrystia Freeland, Canada's silver-spoon liberal Minister of Global Affairs [sic], announced as negotiations got under way that her Liberal government's priorities would be: aboriginal rights, gender equity and climate change. The American negotiators replied, "Huh? Don't you want to talk business?" Months of dithering have passed with Canada and the USA failing to even get on the same page, while the Mexicans look on in puzzlement.

So tired are the Americans of having to deal with the fragrant Ms Freeland and her SJW agenda that they resorted to holding "lower level" meetings without her. See "Canuck foreign minister Freeland skips 5th round of NAFTA talks", WWW 16/11/17. Mr Socks responded by putting former Conservative Prime Minister Lyin' Brian Mulroney and cabinet minister Rona Ambrose on the negotiating team, but everyone knew that was just for show since Ms Freeland won't talk to anybody who doesn't agree with the liberal orthodoxy. "These people are impossible to deal with! I'm going home!" was how she responded to questions from the Belgian government during negotiations for a Canada-European Union trade deal.

The Americans' next ploy was to let it be known, through "back channels", that they would be happy to sit down with someone more business-minded. That led to a clandestine visit to the White House by Stephen "Call Me Steve" Harper, the Conservative who Junior defeated in October of 2015. See "Mysterious meeting between WH bigshots and former Canadian PM", WWW 28/6/18. Unfortunately, word of the visit leaked out, and the Liberals can't afford politically to follow up on any progress which might have been made.

The state of play at the moment is that, absent the distraction of Ms Freeland and her SJW demands, the USA and Mexico are having productive talks, getting down to where the rubber meets the road. Reports this week suggest they're getting close to a deal, including an agreement on the contentious auto sector. That a deal is imminent was confirmed by none other than POTUS himself, who sent out this tweet on Friday.

Because of tariffs and trade barriers, President Trump said, "Canada must wait." Bad news for the Canucks, but not unexpected.  Two days earlier, Breitbart News reported that former New York Stock Exchange President Tom Farley said expected Trump to reach a trade deal with Mexico before the midterm elections. "Likely not Canada. China will be the bogeyman," he said. "You’ll see China continue to struggle. And then the idea will be can we get a big trade deal prior to [Donald Trump's] next election" in 2020.

Before the NAFTA negotiations got underway, many predicted that President Trump would have the hardest time working with Mexico because of his promise to erect a wall along the border. Instead, American negotiators have discovered they have a lot of common ground with the Mexicans, and talks have gone well. The stumbling block in renegotiating a tripartite NAFTA is... wait for it... Canada!

Canada's SJW foreign minister irks Saudis; diplomatic spat ensues

Canada used to have a Ministry of External Affairs, as opposed to "internal affairs", the kind that no-one else has any business sticking their nose into. Later the Ministry was renamed "Foreign Affairs", and the person in charge was called the Foreign Minister (as opposed to "foreign ministers" like Canada's Somali-born Minister of Refugees). The nomenclature changed when liberal one-worlder Just In Trudeau was elected in the fall of 2015. Now Canada has a Ministry of Global Affairs, to show that Canada is now a post-national state, part of the world community, yada yada yada.

The minister Mr Socks put in charge of Global Affairs Canada, as it's now called, is a dimunitive but vociferous SJW feminist named Chrystia Freeland, mentioned here before (use the search tool), notably for breaking into tears and stomping out of the room during negotiations over a proposed Canada-European Union trade deal. In a change from the customary language of diplomacy, the fragrant and emotional minister cried (literally), "These people are impossible to deal with. I'm going home to my children!"

No-one, except Hairboy and the state-owned CBC takes Ms Freeland seriously. The Canada-EU trade deal was signed, but remains in limbo, not having been ratified by all the EU governments. A more urgent piece of unfinished business is the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Ms Freeland is in charge of the file, which is too bad since the Americans want to talk business, not issues of "climate change" and "gender equity". See "Canuck foreign minister Freeland skips 5th round of NAFTA talks", WWW 16/11/17, and "Mysterious meeting between WH bigshots and former Canadian PM", WWW 28/6/18.

Left with nothing to do while the Americans and Mexicans meet in Washington, Ms Freeland found some other business into which to poke her prominent nose. A few readers [probably very few. Ed.] may remember the story of Raif Badawi, a Saudi Arabian blogger who was tried and convicted of having "insulted Islam through electronic channels". He was condemned to seven years in prison and 600 lashes, later raised to 10 years in prison, 1000 lashes and a monetary fine. His wife, Ensaf Haidar, fled to Canuckistan along with her three children, and celebrated last Canada Day by becoming a citizen.

That's the kind of sob story that tugs on the heart strings of SJWs like Chrystia Freeland, even though Ms Haidar has called for a burqa ban similar to that now in force in Denmark and other sensible countries. So Ms Freeland has thrown her support into the campaign to release Mr Badawi, and has instructed her minion to "make representations", as the dips say, to the Saudis.

It hasn't worked. Not only is Mr Badawi still in jail, but his sister, Samar Badawi, has now been arrested. Ooooooooh!!! that just made Ms Freeland's blood boil, so much so that she forgot that she's supposed to be Canada's top diplomat, and on August 2nd tweeted her displeasure with the evil Saudis for the whole world to see.

Foreign Affairs Canada [sic] (@CanadaFP) put out a similar tweet at almost the same time, and to add fuel to the fire, repeated it in Arabic. The Saudis were not pleased, and treated Ms Freeland's interference as something more than a minor diplomatic gaffe. The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs (not Global Affairs) accused Canada of making false statements and interfering with Saudi internal affairs, and gave Canuck ambassador Dennis Horak 24 hours to get out of Dodge [Riyadh, surely! Ed.] They also recalled their ambassador to Canada for consultations. And for good measure, they put an immediate freeze on all new trade and investment transactions with Canada.

Well done, Chrystia Freeland! The Israelis and Iranians will certainly be pleased, as will every human rights activist and social justice warrior in the liberal world.

But the fight has only started. What we've seen so far is only the official Saudi government response to Ms Freeland's egregious meddling. (There has been no comment yet from her boss, who was busy preaching diversity and marching in a Pride parade out in British Columbia.) Direr [more dire? Ed.] warnings have come from "other quarters", including this poster created by the Saudi Arabian social media creative group @Infographic_KSA.

Like the Global Affairs (or Foreign Affairs or whatever it is) tweets, versions of this appeared in Arabic, French and other languages. The message, clearly intended as a warning, doesn't specify what would not please Canadians, but the image of an Air Canada jet heading for Toronto's iconic CN Tower/Tour CN is plain enough for even a Canadian liberal to understand.

@Infographic_KSA describes itself as a project "managed by a group of Saudi youth who are interested in technology and social media facts backed by numbers & evidence." They do not say anything about any connection to any "faith-based organization". They don't need to... EH.

Footnote: The Canuck government's spin on SNAFU was clear from initial reports on the CBC, which referred consistently to tweets "from Global Affairs Canada", barely mentioning Chrystia Freeland, who apparently was unavailable for comment, let alone an apology for any offence caused. See "Questioning the CBC's love affair with Chrystia Freeland", WWW 8/10/17.

Canuck foreign minister Freeland skips 5th round of NAFTA talks

Chrystia Freeland, Canada's Minister of Global Affairs [sic] is a shining example [horrible example, surely! Ed.] of the Peter Principle in action. Dr Laurence J. Peter wrote that in any organization, especially a bureaucracy, people get promoted to the level of their incompetence. Or, in the case of Ms Freeland, beyond. She was clearly in over her head as Minister for International Trade, when, only a year ago, she burst into tears and stormed out of a negotiation meant to work out a Canada-Europe Trade Agreement (CETA), crying that "These [Europeans] are impossible! I'm going home to my children!"

Fortunately for the lovely and fragrant Ms Freeland, her boss, Justin "Mr Socks" Trudeau, flew over to Brussels right sharpish and smoothed things over. The agreement, however, remains unratified as of this writing -- just another fancy but meaningless piece of paper.

Having thus demonstrated that throwing a hissy fit is a great negotiating tactic, Ms Freeland was promoted to Global Affairs, to take charge of negotiations with the USA and Mexico to revise the much-flawed North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The Liberal government which Junior Trudeau leads and of which Ms Freeland is a part wants NAFTA "improved" by the addition of sections designed to... wait for it... respect the rights of indigenous peoples, promote gender equality, and combat the horrors of climate change. Just what you'd expect from a gender-equal cabinet of certified limousine liberals and SJWs. Trouble is, the Americans and the Mexicans have no interest in those things. They just want to find better ways to do business together. So... things are not going well.

The fifth round of talks began in Mexico City this week, but Chrystia Freeland is not there. Neither is American trade representative Robert Lighthizer or Mexican Secretary of the Economy Ildefonso Guajardo Villarreal. The official explanation for their absence is that the top negotiators don't need to talk to each other, since they met on the sidelines of last week's APEC summit in Vietnam. A statement from the Canadian Ministry of Propaganda [Ed., please check.] says "Given the substantive discussions held between the ministers at APEC, the ministers agreed not to attend the fifth round so negotiators can continue to make important progress on key chapters advanced in Round 4. The chief negotiators from Mexico, the United States and Canada will be in constant communication with their respective ministers and will report on the progress reached in Round 5."

That's the party line, according to the Canadian Broadcorping Castration. [I checked. Ed.] The CBC says "a source with direct knowledge of the talks told CBC News that the push for political leaders to take a step back from the negotiating table came from Lighthizer." And that is true, according to an insider who spoke "on background" to Agent 3, but not for the reason suggested by the press release.

Walt can reveal, thanks to the inside dope just received, that the real reason is that Mr Lighthizer simply cannot stand the lovely and fragrant Chrystia Freeland. He doesn't want her at the negotiating table, or even in the same room! Not even in the same hotel! So word was sent to Ottawa that if she goes, he won't. To save face, the diplomats concocted the story that the non-meeting is by mutual agreement. Dear reader, which version of "the truth" sounds more plausible to you?

Further reading on WWW: "Questioning the CBC's love affair with Chrystia Freeland", WWW 8/10/17, and "Bill Maher calls BS on 'shared values' with Muslims", WWW 18/4/17, which includes a great video of Mr Maher -- no friend of Walt's -- destroying the legal blonde cabinet minister.

Questioning the CBC's love affair with Chrystia Freeland

Chrystia Freeland? Who she? For readers outside of Canada (and many inside!) Walt will explain. The fragrant and unbearably smug Christina "Chrystia" Freeland is Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs (or "Global Affairs", whatever the new PC term is). She started out as Minister of International Trade in the first government of Justin "Junior" Trudeau, and was "elevated" in 2017 after demonstrating a lack of talent for international negotiations on free trade. See "Vote NO MA'AM!", WWW 25/10/16 and "Bill Maher calls BS on 'shared values' with Muslims", WWW 18/4/16. Walt regrets that Ms Freeland's minion have succeeded in having the video of her appearance with Bill Maher deleted. As I remember it, he made her look like a fool who knows next to nothing about the real world.

One of our agents was trying to make the same point in the "Comments" section of some articles on the CBC News website. He called out Ms Freeland for being a "limousine liberal" -- a useful idiot who knows next to nothing about the real world. Our agent has been trying for a week or so to get the CBC to print that comment -- just the "limousine liberal" part -- or anything close to it. Here's what happened.

By "pinked", our agent means his comment got "disabled". That's the word that appears in the PINK bar. Geddit? But why? What's so offensive about "limousine liberal" or the coded version of the phrase used here by our agent? Here are two more screen grabs.

You have to give our agent full marks for perseverance, eh. But he's now given up, and appeals to Walt for help. What he wants to know (but can't ask the CBC since there's no way to contact the moderators) is whether the Corp's list of prohibited comments includes any negative reference of any kind to the Honourable Chrystia Freeland. The supplementary question -- assuming the answer to the first to be "yes" -- is WHY? Why is the CBC so in love with Ms Freeland that even the mildest of snarks about her is verboten?

In one case, the mere mention of her name got "pinked". What about free speech? Why is Ms Freeland above criticism? Anyone from the CBC who wishes to answer these questions is free (geddit?) to use Walt's comments section. All you have to do is click on the headline, and the box will appear. We're waiting.

Ron Paul to visit Canada, with some advice

"Big Ideas for Conservatives" is the title of a yak-fest to be held in Ottawa, Canada later this week. The sponsor is the Manning Centre for Building Democracy: Presto Manning, Prop. Mr. Manning was the founder and one-time leader of Canada's Reform Party, the conservative movement that later got hijacked by "Call me Steve" Harper.

Walt may just strap on the snowshoes and head for the world's second-coldest capital* for the conference, since the line-up of speakers includes some real conservatives, including Walt's favourite libertarian, Ron Paul.

If the weather forecast looks iffy, Walt may have to be content with rereading the interview given by Dr. Paul to Paul Koring of the Globe and Mail. [That would be a "Paul-to-Paul" interview, eh. Ed.] [That's apauling! Walt.]

Dr. Paul thinks Canada and the USA could learn from each other and do more in concert to free the people from big government. For one thing, he says, the border should be more open, the way it used to be. As one who can recall hassle-free trips across the bridges and tunnels as recently as the `70s, Walt agrees.

Dr. Paul thinks too much is being made of the distinction between liberals and conservatives. Labels, including racial labels, are divisive, he told Mr. Koring. "To me the message of limited government is universal -- that is the message of liberty and why it is beneficial, not only to our personal lives as well as our economic lives."

You won't be surprised to learn that Ron Paul has not time for Canadian approaches to gun control and universal health care. He thinks Obamacare should be scrapped, and that health care should be left to the private sector because government doesn't do a very good job. "Obamacare is in chaos, prices are going up, there are shortages, doctors are quitting, so I don't see that government delivering a service or a good is of any benefit to the people."

Dr. Paul does think America could learn some budgeting prudence from north of the border. And he thinks NAFTA should be scrapped in favour of even freer trade. In all things, he says, let the people – and the market – decide.

Click here to read the Globe and Mail's longer version of the interview.  

* Ulan Bataar, Mongolia. You're welcome.