Trump may get peace, weaponizing the justice system and Canada's auto industry under attack...

As Trump seeks peace with others, he seeks economic war with allies.

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The old Chinese proverb says, “May you live in interesting times.”

To be honest, I’d rather live in less interesting times. There are too many top news stories, too many issues that have an actual impact on our lives.

This isn’t just politics, it’s more than that be it the peace deal in the Middle East, the Pacific Palisades fires or the ongoing trade dispute between Canada and the United States.

Peace in the Middle East?

Perhaps.

Israel and Hamas have come to terms according to reports and Donald Trump has said that a deal is in place.

We need to know details, we need to make sure the hostages come home, but this is a positive step. At least as long as things keep moving forward.

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Contact your MP today to say no to the beer tax hike.

Don’t use the system against your opponents…

If you don’t want your opponents to weaponize the justice system against you, don’t weaponize it against them. It’s a pretty simple concept and for decades, centuries even, politicians in Western democracies abided by this idea.

It’s the same strain of thought that says don’t pass legislation that gives you power that you wouldn’t want your opponents to have.

For the most part, these ideas have served western liberal democracies well. Over the past several years, these ideas have been thrown aside in favour of using the system to attack your political opponents.

In the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, Donald Trump leaned into the “lock her up” chant about Hillary Clinton. Yet, he never actually followed up on it, it was a campaign tactic, not something he wanted to follow through on.

Yet, once Democrats had power again in 2021, they decided to use their positions to go after Trump. There are plenty of Canadians reading this and saying they should have gone after Trump harder.

That’s not how our system has worked in Canada or the United States, until Trump came along. Then it seems that advocating for your opponent to be jailed, and then acting on it became the norm.

Arson, not climate change…

Last January 7, I flew out of California worried about the wildfires that were ripping though the Los Angeles area, specifically the Pacific Palisades area. The winds were high, even where I was in Palm Springs, but thankfully there had been some rain in that area overnight.

I spent days hearing about how these fires around LA which burned down thousands of homes were caused by climate change. It was like the wild fires in Canada a year earlier, it was all about climate change, and then we started to hear the A word - Arson.

Now, we have a person facing charges for arson that shows the origin of this fire had nothing to do with climate change.

Jonathan Rinderknech, a 29 year-old man was arrested in Florida but had been living in California when the fires were started. According to federal officials, the fires had stared at the hands of Rinderknech.

“The complaint alleges that a single person’s recklessness caused one of the worst fires Los Angeles has ever seen, resulting in death and widespread destruction in Pacific Palisades,” said Acting United States Attorney Bill Essayli. “While we cannot bring back what victims lost, we hope this criminal case brings some measure of justice to those affected by this horrific tragedy.”

From the news release:

According to an affidavit filed with the complaint, law enforcement determined that the Palisades Fire was a “holdover” fire – a continuation of the Lachman Fire that began early in the morning on New Year’s Day 2025. Although firefighters quickly suppressed the Lachman Fire, unbeknownst to anyone the fire continued to smolder and burn underground within the root structure of dense vegetation.

On January 7, heavy winds caused the underground fire to surface and spread above ground in what became known as the Palisades Fire, which caused widespread damage in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles.

As I said, the winds at that time were insane, even in Palm Springs, hours away from where the fires happened, but anything that spurred on the fires in those conditions would lead to what we saw in early January.

But climate change…

Not saying it isn’t a factor, but I’m also saying it shouldn’t be an excuse.

Trade between Canada and the U.S. could soon blow up…

There is talk about Donald Trump getting the Nobel Peace Prize and for the most part, I don’t think it is crazy idea. We’ve seen Trump shut down several small scale wars and skirmishes, he’s tried hard on the Russia-Ukraine war and he may have hit peace between Israel and Hamas.

And yet, he continues to wage economic war with his closest neighbour and ally, Canada.

As I report in my latest column for the Toronto Sun, Trump appears to want our entire auto industry. Well, he at least wants our auto assembly plants, which have also been around for more than a century and as I explain in my column, GM wouldn’t exist without Canadian money.

We put a lot of things on the table and yet it is not enough to stop the Americans from screwing us over.

Contact your MP today to say no to the beer tax hike.