Doug Ford praises America 250, Canadians take things too personally and what is happening with our trade talks...

Plus, getting rid of a really bad CRTC policy that hurt Canada's broadcasters.

On the second floor of the Sheraton Centre in downtown Toronto, in the Dominion Ballroom no less, a group of Canadians gathered to toast America’s 250th birthday on Thursday eventing.

Sure, it’s a month early, but the party thrown by the American Consulate in Toronto can never compete with the July 4th party in Ottawa. That party is normally one of the most sought after invitations in the nation’s capital and one that I’ve been lucky enough to attend under various presidents.

Tonight, in Toronto, it was Consul General Baxter Hunt welcoming Ontario’s Lieutenant Governor Edith Dumont and Premier Doug Ford to the stage. Both shared kind words about the United States, both made references to past troubles including 1812, and both toasted to future progress and success together.

In the end, Dumont, Ford and Hunt all took the stage together to offer a toast to America 250 and to friendship.

Isn’t that how it should be?

We can disagree and agree to disagree and yet still get along.

That’s how it has been in my personal life for decades with friends who hold different political views, and we manage to stay friends.

For the record, Ford doesn’t drink and left the stage with his glass and quickly disposed of it.

Canadians have taken everything too personally...

The Americans have put tariffs on every country in the world and only two have retaliated – China and Canada. I’d argue that once you tally up the counter tariffs, the changes to procurement, the anti-American policies, the booze ban, the call for Canadians not to visit the United States and the constant anti-American rhetoric in Canada that no country has retaliated as much as we have.

You could argue that Trump didn’t threaten to annex other countries and to a degree you’d be accurate but was that really a threat or a troll.

Remember, I was willing to head to Washington and interview Steve Bannon, Trump’s former top advisor on this issue. I explored what the Americans wanted when others wouldn’t and I came to the conclusion that Trump had been trolling Justin Trudeau.

Even if he wasn’t, by the time Mark Carney was PM and made his first trip to the White House in May 2025, Trump was saying that while he’d like us to be one country, it takes two and we aren’t interested.

We had clearly told our would be suitor that we were not interested and more than a year later, we are still overcompensating and punishing him.

In a normal trade spat, when a country tariffs your steel, aluminum and autos, you put counter tariffs on their steel, aluminum and autos. We’ve done that, an awful lot more, and we’re asking why the Americans are upset with us.

We are making some progress in spite of ourselves...

For the last several months we’ve been doing everything we can as a country not to engage with the Americans. We’ve gone out of our way make sure that serious trade talks weren’t happening, we haven’t put anything on the table when talks have been suggested.

Even this week, I’m told that our list of issues that we agreed to speak to them on were limited to very technical matters and there was very little of substance.

The view is, don’t give Trump a win.

The problem with that approach, as anyone who has done negotiations knows, is that if the other side doesn’t get a win on something then you won’t get a win either. It will become a negotiation where each side tries to grind the other down and as much as I think Canada can and should negotiate from a position of strength, we won’t win a grind the other side down scenario.

I wrote a column for the Toronto Sun today detailing what I know about the talks in Washington.

There is frustration, there is anger, there is anxiety about Doug Ford going to Washington, but there is also progress.

Especially on autos, which is key to the Ontario economy, but given that autos are the second most valuable export after oil, it is key for the Canadian economy.

Let’s hope we keep making progress. Read the column to see how and why I say this is important.

A bad policy overturned means I’m praising Carney...

Yesterday I was writing about the Carney government overturning the horrible decision of the CRTC to put an effective tax on American streamers. Some Canadians loved this policy just because it made Americans pay money to the Canadian government, but the reality is that the policy was bad for Canadian consumers, bad for Canadian businesses and bad for our trade negotiations.

You can read the whole column here, and if you do, please share it.

The bottom line is that we were telling foreign streamers that they had to pay 15% of their total Canadian revenue into a government fund they didn’t control to pay for Canadian content. We were also telling Canadian broadcasters and Canadian streamers that they had to pay 25% of their revenues to do the same thing.

That’s not 15% or 25% of profit, it is revenue, and the only thing that will do is drive up costs. This is a bad policy from every front you can imagine and one that makes our homegrown broadcasters weaker.

If you want to subsidize Canadian content, then do it directly. If you want to tax foreign streamers, then do it directly.

Instead, the CRTC was doing both indirectly and doing it badly because they are an incompetent organization run by people who don’t understand the industries they regulate.

This is also a policy that the Americans see as discriminating against their companies and one that they will fight against. It’s not just an issue of Trump and the Republicans opposing this policy, the Biden administration warned us for years against adopting this policy.

Had the Carney government not done the right thing and overturned this policy then we would have united the Republicans and the Democrats in having a reason to fight against us over a policy that was also bad for our own industry.

Cato the Elder, a statesman and philosopher in ancient Rome used to end his speeches by saying, “Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.” My Latin is rusty, non-existent really, but I am told that translate into “Furthermore, I think that Carthage must be destroyed.”

That is how I feel about the CRTC, an organization that is currently trying to kill both Canada broadcast industry and Canada’s telco industry via bad policy.

The CRTC must be destroyed before it destroys Canadian industry. I’m happy to brief anyone in power as to why if they are interested.