🇨🇦 Ottawa Begs Provinces to Surrender Their Only Leverage

After yanking U.S. booze off shelves as retaliation, Mark Carney now wants premiers to put it back to pacify the White House before Washington slaps tariffs on $29 billion in Canadian goods. So the grand strategy is: act tough, then fold on command. Even Manitoba’s Wab Kinew can see the absurdity, saying Trump is weak and warning against giving up effective leverage. The whole mess, as reported, exposes a political class that talks sovereignty until the first real pressure arrives.

And look at the structure beneath the theatre: provinces run liquor monopolies, meaning governments can weaponize distribution overnight, then reverse it overnight when Bay Street and Ottawa panic. That is not free trade, and it is not national strategy. It is managerial improvisation by a country governed like a branch office. Trudeau-era erosion taught these people that symbolism is policy. Carney is proving he learned the lesson well: Canada postures, provinces absorb the blow, and ordinary producers and consumers get treated like bargaining chips in someone else’s game.

🍁 Maple Chronicles