Sandy White

🇨🇦 is one of the luckiest countries on Earth. We have the energy, resources, talent, geography, institutions and alliances to become one of the world’s richest and most powerful countries. We’ve spent decades accepting mediocrity and thinking like a middle power. Instead, 🇨🇦 should become an economic and geopolitical powerhouse. I think we can do it.

If you had to choose between higher government deficit spending or lower personal and corporate taxes to stimulate the economy, which is it?

Two critical things have happened recently that are important for political discourse in Canada and the US. Both the anti-free-trade/MAGA crowd and fringe Alberta separatists have been silenced. Their causes have been discredited, their rhetoric has lost its appeal, and their movements no longer dominate the conversation online or in the media. This is the beauty of democracy. Voters don’t always get it right. But elections and referendums allow people to reject division, chaos and manufactured grievances. In Canada and the US, the people sent a message that stability and unity matter. That doesn’t mean these peddlers of lies, misinformation and resentment have disappeared. But their influence is diminished and many have been revealed as the charlatans they are. The best way to keep those forces at bay is to build richer, stronger countries with institutions and leaders committed to truth, stability and shared prosperity. I hope we can do that.

Ottawa seems to have forgotten that 98% of Canadian businesses are small businesses. In typical Liberal fashion, Carney’s budget offers billions for mega projects and corporate interests, but precious little for Main Street. No meaningful tax relief, regulatory reform or serious help adopting AI. I run businesses in several industries across Canada. The disconnect between Ottawa’s ambitions and the realities of running a business is astonishing. Canada doesn’t just need to attract the next billion-dollar investment. We need to make it easier to build the next million-dollar business, and help thousands of entrepreneurs grow faster and become more productive. Carney’s government has shown remarkably little interest in doing either.

The smugness of the Liberal government as they talk down to Canadians about how they are wisely spending your money at rates never before seen that will put Canada into a deeper fiscal hole from which it will be difficult to recover is astonishing.

Trump’s midterm defeat weakens him politically, but doesn’t make him less dangerous to Canada. He still has enormous executive powers over trade and foreign policy, and has said he’ll veto Democratic legislation and rely more heavily on executive orders. He is also an octogenarian megalomaniac who risks being more combative and unpredictable, not less. A Democratic Congress/Senate may help Canada challenge some of his tariffs. But a politically neutered Trump doesn’t necessarily leave Canada any further ahead. We need to focus on getting richer, stronger and more self-reliant so we are no longer at the mercy of foreign political pressures- from America or anyone else.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. The US midterms remind us that the political pendulum can swing dramatically in either direction. Democracy is imperfect, messy and fragile. But its greatest strength is that citizens can hold their leaders accountable. And that is something worth celebrating.

Ontario’s healthcare system is so poorly managed that patients are now turning to Facebook and WhatsApp to find specialists. An Ontario Medical Association poll found that 20% of people waited at least 6 months to see a specialist. And that is only getting worse. Meanwhile, I operate clinics and see specialists struggling to find enough patients. This is an absurd failure of an antiquated, bureaucratic referral system. Ontario keeps spending billions on healthcare while failing to you’re the basics of healthcare. This is what happens when a single-payer system is plagued by bad management and little accountability.

The idea New York City pizza is amazing is a myth. There’s some decent places here, but mostly hype. The few“good” spots in Manhattan are tourist traps for rubes to wait in line for hours.

Mark Carney promised Canadians fiscal discipline, lower deficits, declining debt to GDP and an economic revival driven by private investment. Here’s where we actually are: The Parliamentary Budget Officer projects federal debt rising from $1.3 trillion to $1.67 trillion by 2031. Debt as a share of GDP is projected to rise, not fall. Interest on that debt is the fastest-growing federal expense. And despite billions in announced investments and major projects, and a promise to build things at speeds never before seen, little new private capital has actually materialized, and the building hasn’t happened. Carney also says he’s balancing the “operating budget”. But there is no such thing as the operating budget. It is just the budget. So, we’re spending huge amounts of money without the economic growth to justify it. You do that long enough, and you go broke. Why are we letting Justin Trudeau in a better suit and some spreadsheets hoodwink us all over again?

I’m in NYC. The midterms are in 2 days. It’s fascinating how divided this country feels. NYC is a Democratic fiefdom. Parts of Florida, where I live part-time, feel like an entirely different Republican planet. As a Canadian, the binary nature of American politics feels unnatural. Hundreds of millions of people are expected to awkwardly pigeonhole themselves into 1 of 2 political parties. Every election cycle makes me think America would benefit enormously from a serious third option. Democracy is imperfect and messy, but it’s the best system we have. America feels less and less like a stable democracy. But I wonder how much of America’s division is created by a system that forces everyone to choose between 2 competing tribes. In reality, Americans maybe aren’t quite as divided as their politics makes them appear.

Atlantic Canada is the poorest region in the country. Its GDP/capita is barely 80% of the Canadian avg and it relies heavily on gov support. That’s part of the challenge of running a vast federation with a small population. Richer regions help support poorer ones. But Atlantic Canada doesn’t lack resources, ports, an educated population or growing tech industries. What it lacks is the economic framework to really thrive. As Canada enters a transformative period that will define our future for decades, we should be willing to make some radical decisions. The four Atlantic provinces should aim to have the lowest taxes in Canada. Become the easiest place to start and grow a business. Invest heavily in R&D. Build defence and shipbuilding industries that can compete with the likes of South Korea and Finland. Instead of relying on the rest of Canada to sustain their prosperity, why not become the region that shows the rest of Canada how to get rich? It’s possible. But it requires politicians willing to take some risks.

Canada is increasingly on a war footing as geopolitical tensions rise. But we seemingly can’t account for basic things like where our bullets and bombs are. The Auditor General just said that $656 million worth of ammunition is overdue for mandatory inventory checks. Meaning we don’t know where it is or how much we have. At the same time, our troops sometimes lack the equipment to conduct basic training exercises. And this is happening as Canada prepares to spend hundreds of billions more on defence. Great that we are rebuilding our military. But if the government can’t manage something as basic as accounting for the equipment we already own, how the hell can we trust it to manage hundreds of billions in new spending? This isn’t just incompetence. It’s a threat to our combat readiness and continues to make Canada‘s military look like a mess.

Does anyone else find it ridiculous that private citizens are raising money to restore 24 Sussex? The federal government has the money. Canadians are already taxed enough. Why the hell are we asking people to donate to restore the official residence of the Prime Minister of a G7 country?

Who cares what the damn name of the Canada-EU relationship is? Associate membership, strategic partnership, alliance for the future, etc. What matters is having a reliable partner to help diversify away from an unreliable USA. Canada was never going to join the EU, and some of its larger members are hesitant about the relationship. Mark Carney is mostly trying to do the right thing. But it’s somewhat window dressing on a relationship that already exists. We have CETA, but 9 EU countries still haven’t ratified it. Why not finish that first? We have NATO, but its credibility is increasingly threatened Trump. Canada needs to be richer, safer and less dependent on the America. If a closer EU relationship achieves those things, call it whatever the hell you want. Just make it deliver.

At the early stages of relationships, it’s better not to put labels on things. It’s new and exciting, and maybe a little dangerous- especially if you’re flirting in front of your ex. But you want to avoid pressure. So Canada and the EU are just doing the “friends with benefits” thing now. Cleaner that way.

$1100 a year. That’s how much Donald Trump’s self-destructive tariffs cost the average 🇺🇸 household. The midterms are next week and, as Republicans are set to lose the House and Senate, Trump is making last minute tariff concessions and claiming a deal is close with Canada. It isn’t. But he is showing how weak he really is. This ridiculous fight has only hurt both countries while making Trump increasingly unpopular. Canada wants a fair deal with the US that gets us back to making money and growing together as strong allies. Against a struggling, debt ridden administration, anything less is unacceptable. But that can’t happen with this President, so both countries will continue to suffer.

Mark Carney just made his first major political misstep with Quebec’s new PQ government. By refusing to let PSPP speak at the Canada-EU summit in Montreal, Ottawa has handed the separatists exactly the fight they want. There might be technical reasons for the decision. It’s a federal summit, and no other provinces are invited. But politics and optics matter more. This pisses off Quebecers and makes Ottawa look arrogant and dismissive. Carney could have let PSPP give a meaningless speech on the sidelines. Instead, he’s turned a minor issue into a political confrontation and made PSPP a mini-martyr. The PQ will milk this for everything it’s worth. And it’s a rookie mistake Carney cannot afford to make, and only strengthens a weak PQ government.

17 years. That’s how long it has taken for Canada to get its first F-35 fighter jets. And they’re still sitting in Arizona and won’t arrive in Canada until 2028. In 2009, when I worked in government, we were discussing buying F-35s. I actually thought it would happen quickly. But it’s taken almost 2 decades and 3 different governments to make a simple decision about buying something we critically need for our national defence. And the same pattern risks repeating under Carney. Canada promised huge investments in defence. We’re supposedly rebuilding our military and moving with an urgency we haven’t seen in generations. Yet I speak with senior people in the military and defence contractors who describe a procurement nightmare. Money and decisions still aren’t moving fast enough. How is that possible? We know the world is becoming more dangerous. We know our military needs modern equipment. We know our Arctic is increasingly important to our sovereignty. At some point, this stops being a story about bureaucratic incompetence and becomes one about negligence.