It may be too late to save CUSMA...

The July 1 deadline is fast approaching and Ottawa doesn't seem to care.

We really seem to want to mess up our trade arrangements with the United States.

Yes, we are too reliant on them.

Yes, we need to diversify our trade.

That said, we can’t go from 76% of all exports heading to the United States in 2024 to a fully diversified trade portfolio overnight. We are still reliant on the United States in so many ways be it trade or defence.

As a country, Canada wants to pretend that reality doesn’t exist.

That’s why on trade, and defence, we are making mistakes.

Later this week, the CRTC, Canada’s broadcast regulator will bring in changes that will anger the United States, and not just Donald Trump’s Republican Party but Democrats as well. On defence, despite our promise to increase spending, we remain a weak partner as we taunt the Americans on not buying the F-35 fighter jet.

We saw over the weekend that the United States hit the pause button on Permanent Joint Board on Defence. When Under Secretary of War Elbridge Colby made the announcement on Victoria Day, most Canadians asked, “What is the Permanent Joint Board on Defence?”

Elbridge Colby, a name out of central casting for a New England upper crust twat, made the announcement as the Under Secretary of War for Policy. In his thread on X, Colby pointed to Mark Carney’s Davos speech at the World Economic Forum as one of the reasons for putting the board on pause.

Still, most Canadians were turning to Google to ask, “What is the Permanent Joint Board on Defence?” Or Defense as the Americans might spell it.

It’s an organization that was founded in 1940 at a meeting between Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In August of 1940, the two men met in Ogdensburg, New York a border town about a one hour drive south of Ottawa.

They made the announcement to cooperate on defence before the United States even joined the Second World War.

How significant is this development?

Well, it won’t impact your life but it does show the mood in Washington where I’m told the Americans are just losing patience with us on all fronts.

Which brings us to CUSMA.

Whether it is defence or trade, what I’m hearing out of the American capital is that they are fed up with the non-stop anti-American rhetoric coming out of Canada.

It’s not just Republicans, it’s Democrats too.

Our leaders talk of rupture, of trade wars, of attacks, they do not talk of alliances.

Then when we do something that will set the Americans off, we act all innocent.

I’m not looking for Canada to surrender in the trade talks with the Americans, I think we have leverage. To put it in Trump terms, we have cards to play, but we aren’t playing them.

Instead of leaning into what we have that the Americans want like oil, like natural gas, like electricity, like critical minerals, we go out of our way to alienate them.

On Thursday, as I detail in my latest column for the Toronto Sun, the CRTC is about to invoke new rules and regulations for streaming services like Apple Music, Netflix or Disney + that will anger both sides of the aisle in Washington.

In the latest episode of the Full Comment Podcast, I spoke with Tracy Moran from National Post, their Washington correspondent, about how things are going south of the border.

This conversation happened last week before the Americans hit pause on that board and before the CRTC announced they would add news rules for streamers.