Canada is in a really weird place and I’ve all but given up trying to understand it.  At a certain point you just have to accept that Prime Minister Mark Carney is operating on an agenda for that country that is disconnected from all traditional perspectives around national best interest.

For example, the Canadian trade relationship with the single state of Texas, USA, is larger than the total Canadian trade relationship with the European Union, yet Carney is spending an inordinate amount of time chasing a trade deal with the EU that is never going to amount to anything.  Seriously, it’s a literal dead-end.

First, there’s not a scintilla of alignment between the USMCA (Canada says CUSMA) and the European Union.  There’s two entirely different sets of economic baselines, standards, rules and regulations between trading with the United States and trading with the EU.  If Canada wants a trade relationship with the USA, they have to give up trying to structure their economy to align with the EU; both systems are entirely different.

Canada cannot have a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the EU that contains structural regulations on the flow of goods that substantively restricts Canadian products from entering the USA.  The same issue exists with China.

Now, if Canada wants to separate from the North American trade agreement, then by all means – go for the deal with the EU and/or China.  However, as long as Canada wants to retain their USA dependencies and benefits, there’s no mechanism that permits an FTA of substance with Europe or China.  Mark Carney cannot have it both ways.

Secondly, do you remember when CTH noted the second quarter GDP for Canada appeared to be entirely manipulated by the movement of Dutch Central Bank gold from Ottawa to London.  People laughed at me for noticing the timing and the mysterious (completely unexplained) gain in economic output in the second quarter.  Q4 2025 was flat, Q1 2026 was negative, then mysteriously Q2 had a bounce – and, well, now Q3 is showing a return to flatline or negative.

OTTAWA—Canada’s economy cooled in the latest quarter after activity unexpectedly stalled two months running and early data points to a slight contraction in September.

Gross domestic product was essentially unchanged in August from the month before at 2.372 trillion Canadian dollars, the equivalent of US$1.695 trillion, Statistics Canada said on Friday.  That was softer than the 0.2% expansion expected by economists following a similarly flat result in July.

The national data agency’s advance data indicates output edged down 0.1% in September.

Based on the estimate, Canada’s economy expanded at an annualized pace of 1.3% in the third quarter after surging back to life the period before.

August’s activity reflected a modest 0.1% expansion in activity by goods-producing industries, balancing a 0.1% dip by services producers.

The advance information for September points to decline in manufacturing and mining and oil and gas extraction, partially offset by increases in utilities and recovery in wholesale trade for the month. (read more)

Let me put this as plainly as I can.  Carney is a former banker. Banks know how to manipulate economic outputs because banks can create the appearance of ‘sales’ within an economy.

Mark Carney was getting blasted for having a recession economy (two quarters of contraction Q4 ’25 and Q1 ’26) in early spring ’26 at the exact moment he was delivering his now famous Davos speech presenting himself as the leader of the “middle powers strategy.”

Enter the Dutch Central Bank transferred $86 billion in gold out of Ottawa and New York but didn’t actually take custody of it.  Instead, the Dutch financially transferred the Canadian gold to the City of London.  The Dutch Bank and Bank of England can, I say did, record that 3-way transfer as a physical sale of a Canadian holding (asset).  That created the Q2 Canadian anomaly.

So, in reality pull that Q2 result out of the equation and the Canadian economy has been flat or declining for almost a full year now with a negative -0.1% result in September.  This makes the conversation about Canada’s desire to become more economically dependent on the European Union look even sillier.

The USA economy already at $32.5 trillion is growing substantially at a 3.4% rate; that’s more than a thousand billions’ in economic growth.  The EU economy is barely bumping along at 1.3% growth and Canada is completely flat.

For the past two days, Prime Minister Mark Carney and EU Commission President Ursula Fond of Lyin’ have been conducting an oratory lovefest expressing a desire for Canada and the EU to embrace each other with passionate synergy.  However, back in Europe the rest of the knuckleheads -led by Germany- have dispatched any notion of letting Canada be an “Associate Member” 3,000 miles away. {GO DEEP}

Into this hot mess of diplomatic duplicity intended to dupe the culturally clueless Snow Mexicans and First Nation sensibility enablers, comes a bucket of ice water to the face in the form of a report showing the EU would apply a carbon border adjustment tax to Canadian industrial products because Canada just isn’t progressive enough with their climate preservation regulations {SEE HERE} and the evidence is HERE.

Remember what I said about the North American USMCA being entirely incompatible with the EU regulations on trade? Well, the European Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism is one brutally obvious example therein.  Canada already having created a carbon trading exchange system may be willing to align and regulate themselves even more with that nonsense, but the USA and Mexico are never going to participate in such self-defeating foolishness.

I know there are a substantial number of really solid, conservative and intellectually honest Canadians.  They are in my prayers daily, because the scale of bizarro world frustration they live with is astonishing.  God Bless the pragmatic conservative Canadians.

Now, knowing how valuable time is, I would not recommend a video unless it was well documented, short on banter and hard on facts.  This video is well worth your time.

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