Society

“New Year’s” Tariffs Might Be Good for Canadian Dairy Farmers (I think)

/ Dennis A. Gray / Leave a comment

We have recently learned that the Malignant Narcissist currently occupying the White House is upset because our Prime Minister didn’t flinch. PM Carney, when Howard Lutnick showed up at the last minute and, in a move right out of the “Art of the Deal” playbook, added a few “little” items to the agreement, walked away from the table instead of acquiescing like he was supposed to do. Since such a move is impossible in Donny’s world-view, it took him a moment to respond, but when he did it was totally in character – he threw a hissy-fit.

In addition to all the name-calling, he used the only economic tool he knows other than bankruptcy; he threw another range of tariffs at us set to take effect on New Year’s Day, 2027. Prominent on that list is, surprise, surprise – dairy. However, this could (maybe, kinda, possibly) be a plus in what is otherwise another frontal attack in the trade war. I’m no economist but stay with me.

Currently, the amount of dairy that the US can dump (that word ‘dump’ is important) onto the Canadian market is restricted.  Under CUSMA Canada has agreed to let the USA supply 18% of our total dairy. Any amount higher than that will be levied at a very stiff 250%. I know, sounds ridiculous, right? Sounds like the orange and blue autocrat may have a point. But that figure is, as I understand it, meant to signal a hard ‘NO’ on stretching that limit. Proof of its effectiveness is the fact that the tariff has never been levied – ever.

The biggest dairy producing state in the US, Wisconsin, has more cows than all of Canada; and that little detail is why Canada uses “Supply Management” to oversee the production of dairy products. Each farmer is only allowed to produce a certain amount of milk for sale in Canada. In exchange, farmers are guaranteed they will be able to sell a given amount of milk, at a given price. This means small farmers get to make a decent living instead of looking for government bailouts or hoping a country singer starts a benefit concert when times get tough. Milk and butter wind up a little pricey but, generally speaking, it sets a level playing field.

America however, has a different definition of ‘level’. In the US farmers compete to produce as much milk as they can as cheaply as possible. Family farms end up competing head-to-head with corporate mega-farms, frequently losing, and as a result wind up selling their farms to Big Dairy. In a bid to stave off assimilation as long as possible they pump their cows with large amounts of hormones and antibiotics to try to maximize yield.

This means American dairy operations make far more milk than Americans can drink. (This is where that word “dump” comes in.) They need to do something with all that ‘moo-juice’, and coveting our higher more consistent prices, look to sell (dump) their overflow on to us. Without that ridiculously high tariff, that 18% would quickly climb to near 100%, putting our farmers out of business and flooding the Canadian market with hormone and antibiotic-laden milk from all those, mostly unvaccinated, cows. 

So it seems to me these “New Year’s” tariffs might conceivably backfire and benefit Canadian dairy. The new tariffs from both sides (Carney has said he’ll go toe-to-toe, dollar-for-dollar in retaliation) could price the Canadian market out of reach of even the big dairy mega-corps. If that happens then the American quota will effectively fall to zero. Canadian farmers would be allowed to produce 18% more product. It’s not likely to result in lower prices, but with full access to the market then at least things like Gay Lea butter and Chapman’s ice cream aren’t likely to cost more.

Now, are things going to play out this way? I don’t know, maybe? Like I said I’m not an economist (I know a couple, one of them even teaches at a university) but I think they could. And if they do, then the only ones to suffer under that scenario will be the same American dairy farmers who voted that “stable” genius into office in the first place.

Parking Lots and Wineskins

/ Dennis A. Gray / Leave a comment

For those expecting Canada to make concessions so we get a deal with the current U.S. administration; where have you been living for the past 18 months?

It’s become increasingly obvious that Agent Orange doesn’t really want a deal. He has frequently said so, and in just so many words. If there is a deal, that means there’s rules that need to be followed, and rules are the one thing he considers to be most beneath him. Iron-clad contracts are a thing that exist only in the minds of other people. Recent history has made it clear that for him a deal is only something he can take credit for, until it gets in his way, then it becomes an atrocity someone else created, which he had nothing to do with it, even if it has his signature on it.

Too many people have forgotten that there is only one goal in The Autocrat’s agenda – annexing Canada and making it the 51st state. That hasn’t gone anywhere, he just stopped talking about it in the hope we’d forget and act as if it’s not there. Far too many of us have; people who should know better.

All the tariffs, all the threats, everything this Epstein-denier does is designed to fulfill the objective of owning Canada. He said it at the very beginning. How will he get Canada to become the 51st state? By “economic force”; plain and simple, that’s been the plan all along. Add tariffs, remove tariffs, change the rules, ignore the rules, it’s all “weaponized uncertainty” designed to bring us to our knees and have us begrudgingly agree to become part of the U.S. He really doesn’t care if we like it, just so long as it happens.

So what do you do when you need to make a deal with someone who doesn’t want a deal and you have no apparent leverage? You make deals with people who do want a deal, and in so doing build leverage. It doesn’t take a degree in economics to figure that one out. If the Pedophile-in-chief figures we need them more than they need us, then you restructure so we don’t need them as much. You endure the hate, the taunts, the injustice, the tactics while you restructure your economy so that it’s far less reliant on the single relationship.

While that’s going on more and more of the sycophants currently occupying Washington D.C. come to realize they actually do need us, far more than any of them want to admit. It hurts to wait things out for sure; and for smaller businesses and the more disadvantaged among us, it hurts a lot. I’m on a fixed income so I feel the pain, I assure you. However, there’s some truth in the idea of “no pain, no gain”, but that too is leverage. You let the pressure build on the inside until eventually something’s got to give.

Which is why I like what the Prime Minister is doing. Frankly, it reminds me of Jesus’ comments about wineskins.

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, there’s a point in Matthew’s gospel where Jesus is asked why his disciples don’t fast (avoid eating for a time, often for religious reasons) the way the Pharisees do. Jesus responds by saying the time is not yet right for his followers to start fasting and gives this analogy …

“No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak, for the patch pulls away from the cloak, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are ruined, but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.” (Matthew 9:16-17)

What’s he trying to say here? Well, new wineskins (leather bottles commonly used for carrying wine around in the 1st century) are fresh, elastic, and pliable, allowing them to expand under the pressure created when unfermented grape juice ferments and releases gases in the process of becoming wine.  Now in contrast, old wineskins have already been stretched to their limit; they’re dried out, becoming stiff and brittle. They are fine for storing wine, but they can’t take the pressure of the fermentation process. If you try, the old wineskins will burst, resulting in the loss of both the wine and the wineskins. 

Picture of the excavator tearing up my parking spot

As I write this; a large John Deere excavator is out in the parking lot of my condo tearing up the asphalt and loading it into dump trucks so that a new parking lot can be laid. It would be a lot faster, and cheaper, with less inconvenience to just lay down a new layer of asphalt on top of the old one; that’s what they did the last time just before we moved in here more than 25 years ago.

And that is the point; they used that option a quarter of a century ago. If we do it again now, cosmetically it will look great, but underneath it’s just a pretty layer on top of an old crappy layer, which is on top of an even older, crappier layer and chances are it won’t last very long. It will crack and buckle as the layers underneath it shift with time and temperature. The time has come to start over.

Like I said, it seems to me, in a way, that is what Prime Minister Carney is doing, making new wineskins. In this case, new economic infrastructure that will hold up better when we finally do reach some kind of agreement with the unpredictable “genius” south of us. Yes, there is risk, there’s inherent risk in anything new. The new parking lot may well crack anyway, I mean, shift happens. And like the crap my neighbors and I are going through right now, restructuring is going to be a royal pain until everything plays out.

Unfortunately, only time will tell whether my new parking lot and our new economy can handle the traffic.

Melting Pots, Mosaics, and the Body Politic

/ Dennis A. Gray / Leave a comment

When I first watched this video and listened to our Prime Minister discuss the difference between the ‘melting pot’ in the U.S. and the ‘mosaic’ here in Canada my thoughts immediately went to Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians…

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many. [1 Cor. 12:12-14]

Politicians spend a lot of time trying to express society and the nation with various metaphors that speak to the unity or solidarity of its citizens. Family is a common one, so is team, which I always thought had a real us vs them vibe. But there is one metaphor that they seem to avoid these days, the human body. As Paul points out when referring to the body of believers, each part of the body serves a different purpose but they are all part of the same body, working toward the same goal, the healthy survival of a whole being.

Now, I need to point out that this idea did not begin with Paul of Tarsus. The idea of society functioning as a healthy human body, as far as we know, is first found in the Hindu Rigveda, explaining the caste system by comparing societal roles to different parts of the human body (e.g., mouth, arms, thighs, feet) about 1500 BCE. Plato refined the concept in Republic and Laws in the 4th century BCE, emphasizing that a state’s well-being relies on all its parts functioning properly, while illness represents societal dysfunction. We call this concept the body politic.

Why would Paul draw on a political metaphor to expound on Christian unity? Simply because using common cultural imagery is a habit of his writing. For example in Titus he quotes the Cretan poet Epimenides: “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” Again, in 1 Corinthians 15 he quotes Greek playwright Menander: “Evil company corrupts good habits. So it is no surprise that he uses what, for an educated Roman citizen, would have been a common image of the structure of a society.

So why then, do we so seldom hear politicians today use the body politic as a metaphor in their appeals for unity? I think it’s to avoid the obvious question, “If you think the nation is a body, then why don’t you take better care of it?“

Indeed, regarding the body of citizens as functioning like an actual human body would, quite naturally, imply that one has a responsibility to maintain that body. If your ankle hurts, you try to ease the pain. You might start with a salve or ointment. You might wear a brace of some kind. If the pain persists then you would seek medical attention, but regardless of the strategy, the goal is the same, ease the pain, deal with the issue, restore the body to a healthy condition.

If you’re a politician, using a metaphor that highlights your responsibility to listen to the pain of the parts of the body and actually do something about it, is something you might understandably want to avoid.

That was the point of a publication called The Body Politic published in Toronto from 1971 to 1987. It was a monthly newspaper and magazine that became the anchor for Canada’s gay liberation and lesbian feminist movements, playing a foundational role in queer journalism, activism, and community building. The various columnists and writers that created and maintained the publication were quick to point out that a large part of Canada’s body politic was in pain and needed serious attention for the nation to be whole.

Of course the LGBTQIA2+ part of Canada’s body are not the only ones suffering. The various members of the aboriginal community, immigrants, women, teenagers, we could go on. Governments of all levels in Canada struggle to adequately listen to and address the pain that each of these groups feels, so again, it no surprise that they avoid using imagery that highlights their lack of action, or even acceptance of the responsibility to the nation’s well-being.

But let’s get back to Paul because the church has missed the larger point of the metaphor as well. While an argument can be made that the church, in all it’s various incarnations, has a somewhat better track record than many levels of government, there are still members of the body of believers who are in pain, who are feeling ignored, even criticized and attacked, and are in desperate need of medical attention.

We talk a good game, but have a long track record of finding more reasons to exclude people from the body of Christ than for including them. We shut people out for not living in the manner we think they should, or for being born just a bit different from us. We amputate parts of the body of Christ over points of theology and dogma that, from my point of view, amount to gnat straining and camel swallowing. (I’ll let you look that one up, but a lot of you get my meaning.)

I think we need to revive the body politic as a common metaphor for the society we live in, not just in Canada, but everywhere, because we need to be reminded that we have a responsibility to do better, as a church, as a society, as a nation, and even, as a species.

Some thoughts on AI in Canada

/ Dennis A. Gray / Leave a comment

I’ve been thinking about AI, like a lot of you, and I’ve come to a few conclusions.

1: It’s not going anywhere. It’s too powerful, too easy to use, and no amount of legislation is going to put this genie back in the bottle. So what does this mean?

2: If we don’t develop a plan, as a society, as a nation, and as a government, to develop and control how and by whom AI is used some other country will do it for us. Likely either the US or China. We’ve made that mistake before, we can’t afford to make it where AI is concerned.

3: Fear of AI is counter productive. The reason Canadians, including our policy makers, are so afraid of AI is because most of the tech bros that control or are trying to control AI are horrendous caricatures of Bond villains. Musk, for example. The ones who aren’t, aren’t in the public eye. We need to focus on them.

4: The thing is those same Bond villains will solve AI’s problems for the same reason they want to own AI to begin with – to make money. Cooling AI is expensive, figuring out how cool data centers efficiently, with as little water as possible, will cost less and thus improve profits. The same with energy usage, size of buildings, everything. Solving these issues will increase profits so they will solve them – eventually.

5: Therefore, the way to control AI is NOT to make it illegal. It’s to speed up that process by making it even more expensive. Make using water to cool data centers expensive enough to encourage R&D into using less but not enough to drive them out of the country. Same with energy, land, and everything else. Just banning it will not stop it. We’ve tried that before too.

Conclusion: As I said before, if we don’t have a plan for AI use and development one will be imposed upon us because trying to make it illegal simply won’t work. We need to make Canada a profitable place to invest in AI that makes doing in a responsible way the most profitable of all.

Where Have All the Monarchs Gone?

/ Dennis A. Gray / Leave a comment

This morning, as I was walking through Margaret Greene Park with Roberta, we took note of all the little white butterflies that were fluttering around us. When I was a kid at Paisley Road School, we were told they are properly called Small Cabbage White Butterflies, but we all just called them Cabbage butterflies. As we walked, we admired them and enjoyed the cool of the shade along the path.
Then it hit me… those were the only butterflies I had seen all this year, anywhere!
At least in the city anyway. Again, when I was a kid (do I sound old yet) we regularly saw Dustywings (several varieties), Skippers, and, best of all, Monarchs! We used to catch them with homemade butterfly nets and put them in jars to take to school and to put in the terrarium. We’d grab the striped caterpillars as well and place them in a glass case with some milkweed, watch them pupate and form a chrysalis, then finally emerge as an adult, marveling at the transformation. It was pretty much a rite of passage for grade school kids in the 1960s.
Today however, I can’t remember the last time I saw a Monarch butterfly in the wild, adult or caterpillar. You know what else I haven’t seen? Milkweed.
Not a one. Used to see them all the time down at the Bullfrog Pond across from John F. Ross C.V.I. Of course, it’s the Bullfrog Plaza now, along with the Bullfrog Pond Park behind it with its concrete creek. The ponds at the top end (west) of Paisley Rd. are gone now too, filled in and paved over for condos and Costco.
No ponds, no milkweed. No milkweed, no Monarchs.
And no tadpoles, insect nymphs, or the hundreds of other tiny creatures we observed in our science lessons at Paisley Road. We collected all kinds of life at school and at home, examining them with our magnifying glasses and sometimes even microscopes. It was easy to do, what with the culvert at the bottom end of the playground, between the school and Knight Lumber. I first learned to really draw making sketches of what we saw in those simple microscopes.
But now the culverts are fenced off, where they haven’t been buried. (Did you know there’s a buried creek under downtown Guelph?) The ponds are filled in, paved over, or lined with concrete. It feels like we took the Biblical exhortation to take stewardship over Creation and, seeing the word “dominion” decided to focus on the dominate part.
And so we excavate it, clear-cut it, pound it, suck it dry, and bend it to our will despite generations of pollution, and the desperate cries of scientists, native elders, rangers of all kinds, and even Boy Scouts, trying to encourage us to follow a less destructive path.
When we do manage to section off a little belt of green across the landscape, others, more focused on reaping instead of sowing, undo it all with a wave of an administrative hand because, well, they have a “mandate” you know. Which is ironic because ‘mandate’ comes from the Latin root mandare which basically means “to give responsibility for” as in to care for and protect. But again, we chose to focus on the “rule over” aspect of the meaning because there’s more money in that.
Funny how meanings change when we want them to. God gave us a mandate to care for creation and to protect it, and all of creation is desperately waiting for us to fulfill that mandate before it’s too late.