My guess is that Mark thought negotiating with he-who-shall-not-be-named was going to be much easier. Perhaps he didn’t count on the fact that HWSNBN is stuck in his tariff-loving ways, doesn’t really care much about Canada, and plays loose and fast with the truth.

Mark probably figured the Great New Deal with America would be done by now, we’d be on our way to new relationships with others around the world, and he could focus on those big new nation building projects. But the deal with the U.S. is not done, because those on the other side are not serious people (but they believe they are serious people). So Mark, I suspect, is rattling his brain, trying to figure out how to manage what is shaping up to be a failure.

A failure to come to agreement, which is his stated specialty. But agreements assume rationality, assume common sense, assume the ability to find shared motivations and interests or places where they can meet in the middle. None of those apply to the current person in charge in the U.S. So what can Mark do? Focus on home, and his sketchy “enabling” legislation that’s supposed to let us build projects faster but apparently still repsect all those things we care about: the environment, indigeous rights.

There was something else about serious privacy concerns — was that in the border bill? I’m not sure, and I didn’t look. I didn’t look because I didn’t want to know. I care about privacy rights and I am not sure they are as sacred to Mark Carney as they are to me. I feel like privacy rights are a trade off Carney would make for tools he believes might help us keep our sovereignty. But I don’t know.

The upshot is this: Canada is a very small country, and most of the world still doesn’t understand we are very different from the U.S. We are small economically and in population. In land size, we are massive. But to keep that land, we have to punch up our power, economically. We have to stand on our own, because we are very, very vulnerable. “Crisis” is a bad word, because “crisis” implies a static, acute situation that is about to blow over: “let’s just get through this crisis.” The reality is that our fundamental economic basis is vulnerable and we need to do something, now.

And Mark is trying, I think. He’s about the bluest Liberal I have ever seen. I like that the NDP stands up for the values I believe in. But I am hoping Mark helps get it done, that this work callouses over our soft little underbelly that’s now been exposed because of HWSNBN wants to exploit it for all it’s worth. This is painful, and harder than probably even Mark expected — but he has clarity about how vulnerable we are, I think. So we’ll move forward. Enjoy the summer. Hope the global tone shifts, and the rest of the world fully realizes we are not Americans.