… It’s come to this: Ottawa now suggests it might have to walk away and suffer what comes. Canada’s economy stands to lose a lot, of course, and the U.S. a little. But the government of Canada is contemplating the possibility that the best alternative to a negotiated agreement with the U.S. might be lose-lose. Now, we are peeking over the cliff.
That’s obviously not Plan A. Ms. Charette was involved in concessions Canada made before it even got to the table for the latest negotiations. Both sides are in Washington exchanging proposals for a deal.
It’s also not the first time Mr. Trump has been warned that inflamed Canadian public sentiment could turn off talks. In Mr. Trump’s first term, advisers to then-prime minister Justin Trudeau warned White House staff that if the President ever publicly repeated his private jibes about Canada being the 51st state it could be the end of talks, according to Mr. Trudeau’s then-principal secretary, Gerald Butts. Second-term Trump smashed through that guardrail before he was even inaugurated.
Still, there’s an inevitable result to playing win-lose over and over. There has to be a red line, or Mr. Trump will accelerate the game. Public anger – the notion that Canadians are willing to take a Thelma-and-Louise drive off that cliff – is one of the few things that give it credibility.
Mr. Carney backed off dollar-for-dollar countertariffs early in his tenure. He kiboshed plans for a digital services tax last year in an effort to make room for talks. It’s hard for a Canadian government to go toe to toe with the U.S. administration because they can hurt our economy more than we can hurt theirs.
But booze bans really stuck in the craw. They weren’t Ottawa’s doing. Provinces pulled U.S. alcohol from the shelves. Premiers imposed the bans because the public wanted them. Economically, it’s not a huge blow – alcohol was less than 0.2 per cent of U.S. exports to Canada in 2024. But they are a pebble in the shoe that’s really bugging Mr. Trump. Travel boycotts probably do, too.
A recent poll suggests Canadians like that. Most don’t want Canada to give in to U.S. demands; a majority want to levy countertariffs.
For all the political support Mr. Carney enjoys, he doesn’t have unlimited room to make a deal. That is one of his biggest negotiating assets.
There’s danger in going over the cliff, of course. Walking away from trade talks with the U.S. is much riskier than keeping relations with China chilly for a few years.
But there has to be a point at which choosing to lose is a better alternative than negotiating at every threat, or Canada will keep on losing anyway.

In his substack, Dean Blundell provides a great update tonight – BREAKING: Team Canada Just Told Trump’s Trade Team “We Won’t Be Able To Stop What Comes Next” As Canadian Hatred Of Trump Goes Nuclear Team Canada just told Team America, “We’re not responsible for what Canadians will do if you hit us with those tariffs.” Here’s what that means…

…Let’s be honest about who we’re negotiating with. Trump personally negotiated, signed, and bragged about the USMCA. Called it the greatest trade deal ever made. His deal. His signature. His victory lap.

Then he tariffed the hell out of it anyway.
Steel. Aluminum. Autos. Softwood lumber. Now a fresh 50% on $20 billion in goods — including products that are explicitly supposed to be protected under the free trade pact he signed. Even Doug Ford — Doug Ford! — figured this out over a year ago, warning that Trump could pull the carpet out from under us in a heartbeat, like he has before.
So when the Americans tell our negotiators they’re “optimistic” a deal can be reached by the 19th, forgive us if we don’t pop the Niagara sparkling wine just yet. A deal with Trump has the shelf life of gas station sushi. The man renegotiated his own renegotiation. The only question worth asking isn’t “can we get a deal?” It’s “what happens when he breaks this one too?”
Which is exactly why Charette’s warning matters. She’s not threatening Trump with Ottawa. She’s threatening him with us.
Here’s what the American side genuinely doesn’t seem to grasp: the retaliation already happened. It’s been happening every single day since early 2025, and it didn’t need a single order-in-council.
Canadians simply stopped showing up.
Fifteen consecutive months of year-over-year declines in travel to the U.S. Automobile crossings down roughly a third compared to before this nonsense started. Cell phone data out of the University of Toronto suggests the real drop in cross-border trips was closer to 42% — even steeper than StatsCan’s official numbers. Canadians were the single biggest source of foreign tourists to the United States — $20.5 billion a year — and we torched an estimated $4.5 billion of that in year one alone. Tourism executives with four decades in the business are calling it the most effective travel boycott they’ve ever seen. Seattle’s tourism board is blaming us by name. Boston’s hotel numbers came in soft during a World Cup.
That’s millions of individual Canadians looking at the 51st state garbage, looking at the tariffs, and quietly deciding: Myrtle Beach can manage without me. Mazatlán it is.
Not to mention, Canada’s economy is booming, adding 75k jobs and .5 percent to our GDP by focusing on what we can control while allowing Trump to truth social himself and his trade team into a corner.
Charette told the Americans Ottawa can’t control the reaction. She’s right. Here’s how it plays out, at every level:

Right now the travel boycott has “stabilized” — the polite StatsCan way of saying Canadians settled into permanently avoiding America as a lifestyle. New tariffs on August 19 relight the fuse. The Canadians who’d started drifting back across the border this summer? Gone again. The “Buy Canadian” sticker on the grocery shelf stops being a nudge and becomes a reflex passed down like a family recipe. Every Kentucky bourbon, every Florida orange, every Vegas weekend becomes a small referendum, and America loses every one of them. This stopped being about prices a long time ago. It’s about respect. And you can’t tariff your way back into someone’s respect.
Ottawa has reportedly floated lifting the provincial booze bans as part of a deal. You know what David Eby said about American alcohol coming back to B.C. shelves? “Not a chance in hell.” His words, on the record, and he’s since upgraded it to never — because lifting the ban while B.C. forestry workers are still getting hammered by lumber tariffs would be selling them out. Doug Ford — who runs one of the largest alcohol retailers on the planet in the LCBO — says U.S. booze stays in the warehouse until the sectoral tariffs on autos and steel are gone. Ford stood with the other premiers in Charlottetown and mused openly that Canada could dismantle the U.S. economy if it wanted to.
If the tariffs land on the 19th, the federal government loses any leverage it had to talk the premiers down. Expect the booze bans to become permanent fixtures. Expect American companies frozen out of provincial procurement — no U.S. firms on Canadian infrastructure builds, hospitals, transit. Expect Ontario to dust off the electricity card. The premiers have spent 18 months proving they’re less patient than Ottawa, and Ottawa just told Washington it won’t be able to hold the leash.
Mark Carney has been measured — maddeningly so, for some of us — but even he has said everything is on the table and that Canada is ready to get tougher if there’s no deal by the deadline. Post-August 19, “tougher” writes itself: retaliatory tariffs come back and go broader. The strategic-sector strategy — autos, steel, aluminum, lumber, energy — pivots hard toward Europe, Asia, and anywhere that honours a signature. Interprovincial trade barriers keep falling because we finally have a reason to act like one country. Every dollar of federal industrial policy gets spent on one question: how do we make sure this can never be done to us again?
That’s the real cost to America, and it’s the one Charette was trying to make Greer understand. Tariffs come and go. But a generation of Canadians re-wiring their economy, their travel, their shopping carts, and their hearts away from the United States? That’s forever money.
Seven days. Maybe there’s a deal. Maybe there isn’t. Maybe there’s a deal and Trump lights it on fire by Thanksgiving, because that’s what he does — it’s the only thing he’s ever reliably done.
But understand what just happened in Washington: Canada’s negotiators didn’t fly down there hat in hand. They flew down and told the most powerful trade office on earth that Canadians cannot be commanded, cannot be controlled, and will not be conned twice. We’ve spent 18 months proving it with our wallets, our travel plans, and our liquor shelves.
Trump can sign the deal or eat the consequences. Either way, Canada already decided who it is.
See you on the 19th, Eh.

Meanwhile, Canada just keeps on keeping on

#BREAKING: New Churchill Falls deal to be announced next week: sources

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— Unofficial CTV News Mirror (@ctvnews-mirror.bsky.social) August 12, 2026 at 4:06 PM

And Poilievre doesn’t have anything to offer in this conversation:

The image Trump cowering like a little bitch in a catering truck with other members of his throuple while running away and leaving the rest of his team and the media to die in a possible Iranian attack will never get old.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) August 12, 2026

For weeks now, Steven Cheung has been throwing himself on top of every food cart in sight, screaming, “I’ll save you, Mister President!”

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— Hoodlum 🇺🇸 (@nothoodlum.bsky.social) August 12, 2026 at 8:00 PM

Here’s some posts in a thread about what to call this  – Cater Force One?

Iran Away?

Some neat posts about that eclipse

This could just be AI, but it looks good anyway

Wildfire Update
Click here for CBC’s Wednesday update story.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/…

Regional officials said they “can’t even think about” lifting evacuation orders for Summerland until the Bald Range fire is better controlled.

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— Geoffrey P Johnston😎🇨🇦🇺🇦 (@geoffypjohnston.bsky.social) August 12, 2026 at 11:23 AM

Shout-out to the Sikh Temple in Penticton

This is terrible:

Not good enough BC/Canada. Fix this.
#bcpoli #cdnpoli

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— NigelBankes (@nigelb.bsky.social) August 12, 2026 at 6:20 PM

Premier Eby said today that the province needs to get faster at dealing with evacuees and helping them with the problems they are all experiencing.
I think we will all need to accept this as the new normal across the country now.