Of course the 2% of items not included are pretty substantial; agricultural products with strict quotas.
There's also strict country of origin rules so if too many materials are sourced outside Canada, even if its made in Canada it can be subject to tariffs. Not to mention needing to adhere to EU standards.
Agriculture is always the hardest due to a variety of factors, including standards, but also farming is among the most subsidized and/or protected businesses in the developed world. Creating a fair and level trading system around it is difficult.
A good example is the dairy protectionism in Canada that Trump so bitterly complains about. The issue is Canada manages its system with production quotas, but the US directly and indirectly subsidizes production. Who's being more (un)fair? How do you create a trading relationship around that?
One difference is in the US they subsidize corn, which makes it cheaper domestically and the support farmers get makes them more competitive on global markets. Canada does supply control on dairy, which drives up prices domestically and prevents competition. There's a reason one is called a cartel.
That, and Quebec farmers and food security. Federal Politicians need rural votes to win elections and keep Quebec from separating. Also food security is important to any nation. And in light of what tRump has done it looks like and even more important goal.
> Creating a fair and level trading system around it is difficult.
There are no real limitations outside of dairy, poultry, and eggs; same as on the US front. If it is so difficult why is there nothing in place, aside from those three categories? Are these the only food categories that matter to people? What about the food that the animals in those categories eat?
> but the US directly and indirectly subsidizes production.
Since the Obama era, the US and Canada have had essentially the same subsidy system, save dairy, poultry, and eggs, which, as you pointed out, get their own special rules. But as you pointed out they are still subsidized indirectly via things like corn subsidies, which is where Canada and the US are now effectively on the same page (that wasn't always the case, of course, but the reforms happened a long time ago now and what went on 30 years ago doesn't mean much anymore). When cooler heads prevailed the US played fair in aligning their system to Canada's, so why isn't the same being willing to be offered in kind? Changing the diary, poultry, and egg system doesn't mean giving up subsidies, if the people want to continue to offer subsidies. The US model already offers a way to provide that. Canada already accepts that for other food products, so there is nothing unprecedented there.
Of course, it's not really about the farmers/production, is it? It is about protecting Saputo, Lactalis, and Agropur's triopoly.
> Changing the diary, poultry, and egg system doesn't mean giving up subsidies, if the people want to continue to offer subsidies.
The US subsidies tend to be more indirect, meaning that the large agri-corporations capture most of it. Farmers in the US have been struggling for years and the Canadian farmers know this (and for better or for worse have political capital at their disposal).
The reason dairy, poultry, and eggs are under Canada's system is because they are not bulk commodities that ship around the world like grains do. Canada also doesn't allow a lot of the farming methods (including hormones) that the USA does. The original aim of supply management was to smooth out the market, but of course has morphed into a cartel.
For the record, I'd love to see the dismantling of supply management the same way New Zealand did (and became an export powerhouse of processed dairy products after). I do love me some cheese and I wish the EU cheese was more economically available.
> The US subsidies tend to be more indirect, meaning that the large agri-corporations capture most of it.
It's essentially the same system, with the primary subsidy being paying 60% of crop insurance premium in Canada and 62% in the US. Of course since crop insurance is acre-based, those with the largest landholdings capture most of the subsidy, but that is equally true in Canada. It's probably true that the US has some larger farms, given the much larger arable landbase (and one of Canada's largest farms just having recently gone bankrupt!), which is what I expect you are trying to say, but I'm not sure how pertinent that is as it is still an equal payout on a relative scale.
> they are not bulk commodities that ship around the world like grains do.
Neither is milk from other animals (e.g. goats), other types of meats (e.g. pork, beef), etc. but none of these have the same system. Moreover, until 2009 tobacco was also supply managed under the same system and it is a bulk commodity that is shipped around the world. So I'm not sure your theory, as fun as it is, holds.
> Canada also doesn't allow a lot of the farming methods (including hormones) that the USA does.
It's a mixed bag. Canada puts higher value on animal welfare, but is much more lax when it comes to things like pesticides. The US doesn't allow hormone use in poultry, so that doesn't really explain what purpose supply management serves either.
No it's not. For bulk commodities, the US subsidies are largely commodity-specific and acre-based; Canadian support is whole-farm and income-based. US subsidies trigger when income margins fall below a set percentage; an Iowa farmer with base acres gets a price loss coverage payment whenever the national corn price is low, good year or not. A Canadian prairie farmer with a good year gets nothing regardless of wheat prices. In the US, most of the money goes to row-crop growers on large acreages, increasingly through discretionary ad hoc payments. In Canada, most money goes to prairie grain and oilseed farms through yield-triggered insurance. If you excluded dairy, US subsidies account for about ~9% of farm receipts (plus or minus a quarter percent depending on year) and Canada ~5% (long term average; payouts tend to spike in bad years).
Swinging to dairy, the US actually sets price floors for wholesale dairy and transfers revenue across processed dairy types. The US system also pays out directly to farmers if margins fall too much (the calculations of said margins is complicated, but it essentially encourages production even if prices fall due to oversupply). These subsidies have historically encouraged overproduction and consolidation and the issue has become acute as the rates of dairy consumption hasn't matched population growth due to a variety of reasons (eg veganism, milk alternatives, etc). One reason Trump has been complaining is because the US would love to have somewhere to dump said surplus.
The Canadian dairy system (which I want to make abundantly clear I'm not defending!), basically links pricing against a hard quota. The result is higher prices for consumers, and tariffs that make unique foreign cheeses very expensive.
> Neither is milk from other animals (e.g. goats), other types of meats (e.g. pork, beef), but none of these have the same system. Moreover, until 2009 tobacco was also supply managed under the same system and it is a bulk commodity that is shipped around the world. So I'm not sure your theory, as fun as it is, holds.
> ... this doesn't explain what is special about the three (once four) agriculture categories.
Because it's political! Tobacco farmers used to be a force to be reckoned with, but when smoking rates plummeted they lost a lot of said power. Other forms of dairy were niche enough not to matter. Bulk meat (beef, pork, etc) are a relatively recent phenomenon and were part of a world trade market by then, whereas chicken, milk, and eggs were considered a staple.
If you're a Canadian dairy farmer, the US system looks like it encourages production above all else and the subsidies are structured enough where a large one-off issue (herd sickness, serious equipment breakdown, etc) will wipe you out. The number of US dairy farms is down almost 80% since the 1990s and it's been driven by low margins. Canadian farmers have a lot more of a direct influence on their government (again for better or for worse).
This is what I meant when I said "Creating a fair and level trading system around it is difficult" because you run up against these interests. I would much prefer a theoretical fair trade system where Canada didn't protect its poultry/dairy and the US didn't protect its sugar (which has a lot of similarities to CA dairy supply management, though the foreign import limits are proportionately less).
> For bulk commodities, the US subsidies are largely commodity-specific and acre-based
Again, the largest component is crop insurance, which is modelled essentially the same as it is in Canada. ~60% of the premium is paid for by the government in both cases. The payout is dependent upon acres.
> The number of US dairy farms is down almost 80% since the 1990s
And 74% in Canada, for what it is worth.
> If you're a Canadian dairy farmer
Not anymore. I am among the 74%. The double-edged sword with the stability offered by supply management is that it makes borrowing much easier (effectively government-guaranteed cashflow), which pushes the price of everything higher, so the economics aren't all that great unless you sold your $100,000 per acre farm in the Netherlands or Germany to pay for it.
> the US system looks like it encourages production above all else
I am not sure I would say that. Co-ops with quota-like systems are not uncommon in the US. What their system does allow is that one guy who thinks he can undercut the prevailing market to slide in, while Canada has a legal path to put a halt to such behaviour. Maybe that's something favourable, but why only in dairy, poultry, and eggs? Isn't that something that every market would want?
> Canadian farmers have a lot more of a direct influence on their government
I do remain a Canadian farmer, though, so I would love for you to expand upon that thought.
> Because it's political!
This is quite a deviation from the bulk commodity/farming practice explanation before. Why the change in tune?
> Again, the largest component is crop insurance, which is modelled essentially the same as it is in Canada. ~60% of the premium is paid for by the government in both cases. The payout is dependent upon acres.
Only if you look at it from a permanent funding point of view. The US gov'ts portion of crop insurance in the USA amounted to $14B in 2026, but ad hoc/disaster spending (which is separate from insurance) is $26B and an alphabet soup of Farm Bill programs is $15.6B. And the bulk of the farm bill's spending (70-80%) is indirect via SNAP and other programs that Canada doesn't really have (though measuring how much if this is an actual farming subsidy is very difficult).
> And 74% in Canada, for what it is worth.
I was basing my statement on numbers I saw off of American stats (which go back further easily obtainable data), but the Canadian/US numbers I can directly pull up comparisons are from 2018 to 2025 (raw statistics Canada data is hard to come by, something the USA does much better on):
Canada: 10,679 → 9,048 = −15.3%
USA: 37,468 → 23,609 = −37.0%
The exit experience is different, though. A CA dairy farmer leaves with a capital asset in their quotas as well as any land/equipment/herd value. A US dairy farmer is liquidating just the latter. Anecdotally, I grew up in Winchester, Ontario which is a dairy hub - a lot of the farming kids I grew up with didn't want to get into farming and a lot of the family farms were sold off and a lot of them are quite comfortable. A lot of farms closer to Ottawa also got gobbled up by suburbs.
> I am not sure I would say that. Co-ops with quota-like systems are not uncommon in the US. What their system does allow is that one guy who thinks he can undercut the prevailing market to slide in, while Canada has a legal path to put a halt to such behaviour. Maybe that's something favourable, but why only in dairy, poultry, and eggs? Isn't that something that every market would want?
Again, I'm not defending supply management, but the dairy farmers are holding onto it and it's been a major pain in almost all of Canada's trade agreements. The fact that Canadian politicians are fighting so hard for it isn't because it's a better system. The one advantage of the Canadian system is that it costs the government little and you don't really contribute to it if you don't consume milk, though. But I'm for free trade and fewer subsidies all around.
> I do remain a Canadian farmer, though, so I would love for you to expand upon that thought.
Dairy farmers have put enough pressure on politicians across the political spectrum that they vigorously defend supply management that, due to its inflexibility, is a major trade headache for Canada from an industry that makes up a very small portion of economic output in Canada; it almost cost us the USMCA renegotiations and caused the CETA negotiations to last much, much longer than necessary.
Awhile back, the nominally free market federal Conservatives forced CN and CP to have minimal grain shipment numbers to deal with a bumper crop because the farmers were fuming at higher freight rail prices against other commodities (mainly oil at the time).
> This is quite a deviation from the bulk commodity/farming practice explanation before. Why the change in tune?
I don't see it as a change in tune. My original comment was that "Agriculture is always the hardest due to a variety of factors, including standards, but also farming is among the most subsidized and/or protected businesses in the developed world. Creating a fair and level trading system around it is difficult." Agriculture made up ~90% of the economy when most modern countries were founded and the political weight is often historical (and arguably constitutionally baked-in in the USA which gives smaller predominately rural states equal numbers of Senators, of which in the USA are very powerful). It's been an American political joke for ages that kissing babies is less important than kissing corn during the primaries that started in Iowa. Also, the Canadian farmers were very upset at the very limited expanded access USMCA provided us dairy farmers.
The US unequivocally supports corn production, which feeds (pun not intended) into cheaper feed for livestock. But these subsidies can be labelled as "strategic" energy independence (ignoring if that's actually the case or not). Is that fair? Should Canada then have to encourage corn production the same way? How would/do you untangle this? It's a political problem.
Untangling these into a fair trade (in the free sense) would require political capital that some countries or parties may or may not have.
I'll finish that I think we broadly agree on how things SHOULD be, but I see the barriers to getting there as not politically feasible. If it was, supply management would already be gone. It causes higher prices and the benefits are highly marginal.
> Dairy farmers have put enough pressure on politicians across the political spectrum
How? I do remember the big protests in the 90s quite well, certainly, but that was 30-some-odd years ago and when, as we saw earlier, there were 300% more diary farmers. Pressure doesn't last forever, especially as you grow into insignificance.
From what I see the pressure comes from the general public, mostly from having built up this idea that supply management keeps "hormone laden" milk out of the market, combined with the people of Quebec seeing any kind of federal "meddling" as an attack on their people.
When longstanding party favourite Maxime Bernier ran for leader of the CPC, the as you say the nominally free market party, on the platform of eliminating supply management it wasn't just dairy farmers who laughed him out of the room. It was everyone. Same thing happened with the early PPC party, before eventually pandering to the crazies to try and find any kind of support. It was quite clearly non-farmers who wanted no part in seeing an end to supply management.
> because the farmers were fuming at higher freight rail prices against other commodities
Words are only worth so much, granted, but when this occurred it was framed as being necessary for the sake of the entire Canadian economy and to preserve Canada's reputation as a trustworthy supplier. The message sent was abundantly clear that it wasn't being done to appease farmers. How do you translate that into farmers having political sway?
> How? I do remember the big protests in the 90s quite well, certainly, but that was 30-some-odd years ago and when, as we saw earlier, there were 300% more diary farmers. Pressure doesn't last forever, especially as you grow into insignificance.
They have an organized lobby that straddles a lot of important ridings in eastern Ontario and parts of Quebec. It also includes a lot of the broader dairy industry. I could accept the argument that it is no longer as powerful as it once was, but I haven't met many non-industry people who care either way. All being equal, Canadians would prefer lower prices, I think. I don't think the general public would have cared, especially if Europe flooded us with cheaper gouda or brie. There has always been a dose of anti-americanism that bounces from healthy to unhealthy and back depending on the geopolitical climate, though.
> when this occurred it was framed as being necessary for the sake of the entire Canadian economy and to preserve Canada's reputation as a trustworthy supplier. The message sent was abundantly clear that it wasn't being done to appease farmers. How do you translate that into farmers having political sway?
CN and CP were already moving records amount of grain that year (IIRC almost 40% above previous records), so to argue that it put Canada's reputation at risk rings hollow. It was because farmers were getting squeezed storing it as well as paying for higher freight costs, on top of the fact that many grain companies and farmers held onto grain from the previous harvest for a variety of reasons. Many grain farmers, who used to have to sell their wheat to the wheat board, got caught flat footed when trying to go out on their own due to then recent deregulation (I'm not convinced this last argument effected things as much as some claim, though).
An "expanded" Schengen Area that crosses the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and brings Canada, Australia (and Japan, maybe?) into the fold would be an incredible thing. I'm all for it.
It would be nice, but it's too high a bar to set, as the visa policies differ significantly between the three.
There is a real danger the Schengen agreement itself will collapse in the upcoming years - Germany is already ignoring both the Schengen agreement and its own courts by keeping border controls.
It has always surprised me that the 'free world', NATO countries, developed countries (including Japan, Taiwan, Australia), however one wants to call them, do not have at least free trade, if not free movement of people and capital, between them.
A travesty, IMO. And a great loss making us all poorer. Not a patchwork of point-to-point free trade agreements, but several hub agreements that countries join, and, in time, the hubs agree to free trade between them too.
The EU is specifically European - its in the name. Many of the arguments for the Eu that came up during Brexit were based on the importance of geographical proximity and shared culture.
> The EU is specifically European - its in the name.
I don't disagree, but by this standard North Korea is a democratic republic, and Turkey's membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a bit odd.
The politics of this is grindingly difficult; people think of "them and us", not "we're all together in three free world". Achieving free trade means either dismantling all the little market carve-outs that local politics relies on, or enshrining them in the collective (EU farming policy).
Imagine trying to integrate the politics of Japanese rice farming into the CAP.
Russia and the US seek to expand by invasion, at the same time there are NINE countries with a stated ambition to join the European Union, and now there seem to be even more countries who want to "more closely align" with the EU (whatever that means).
Whenever countries consider their needs and desires, and what they want their country to be, they look at the countries of Europe - not at Russia, not at the US, and not at China.
More good reliable friends is always better, and fuck the unreliable backstabbing ones as much as possible and reasonable, future will sort out details. World is not static, alliances change and we may revert in future if US population decides it wants to be ruled over by more reasonable, respectable and kind people.
No, it's in the increasingly growing tent cities in my town, and among the junkies that have taken over downtown Ottawa. Glad to hear you're doing well, though.
Housing is a municipal jurisdiction, healthcare is a provincial jurisdiction and immigration (direct, temporary, students, refugees) is a federal jurisdiction (except Quebec has its own immigration jurisdiction).
Bringing in millions of people in a short time without coordination with other jurisdictions to manage housing demands, healthcare demands and needed infrastructure upgrades was grossly incompetent.
Not quite on the epic scale of incompetence as Chairman Mao and eliminating the Sparrow (in terms of consequences) but equally as idiotic in terms of narrow minded thinking.
More people leads to more competition in the job market and housing space. There's no universe in which they are not linked. It's a natural consequence of near 20% population growth in a decade
This is a positive sign: free-minded, aligned, progressive nations clustering together. Suggested next steps are to form a single market, military, issue common trade currency, move off US dollar, stop trading with the US, thereby restoring sovereignty and enacting your own laws etc.
All, of course, is a ramp to eventually shunning the US: the global bully.
> Australia and the European Union signed a free trade agreement in March after eight years of negotiations, removing tariffs on almost all goods and potentially easing EU access to Australian critical minerals.
Reuters left out the most interesting part which is to allow service providers to work on either side and four year visas (which include work) in both directions.
Food and especially liquor continue to have stupid barriers between provinces. But intra-provincial trade increases every year and the CMRA legislation from last year should improve that.
There are no tariffs between Canadian provinces and never have been.
No. You claimed Canada doesn't have free trade internally. The most common barriers to free trade are tariffs. IME tariffs and duties are what most people think of as non-free trade. Witness the current US-Canada trade war. I can order lots of things from all around the world and the main resistance to me doing that are tariffs and duties, wouldn't you agree?
I'm clarifying that the trade barriers on things like liquor and food between Canadian provinces are regulations, not tariffs.
Trade barriers are trade barriers. Free trade means no barriers, not no tariffs specifically. Anything that makes doing business in another province more difficult than regular operation in your own province is a barrier to trade.
Agree completely. The most common barriers to trade are tariffs and I'm glad we don't have those within Canada. The next most common barriers are regulatory and legislative and we've got those but the good news is (unlike the US-Canada trend lately) those barriers are diminishing (at a government pace) in a consistent trend over time.
I'm not aware of steps backwards (as in US-Canada relations) where barriers between provinces increased. Am I wrong to be optimistic?
Well, let's say you sell online, no matter what you're selling, you need to apply the PST/HST of the province the buyer's address is in. And then you need to file a tax return for every province you sell to. Now some provinces have a sales threshold under which you don't need to do a separate tax return, others don't. Some have an HST collected by the Federal government, others don't. And all the PST/HST rates are different. This also applies to digital goods, SaaS, etc...
The US has higher thresholds in every state and no federal sales tax, and buyers pay the duties.
For me the most striking thing about this was before the Brexit referendum there was rhetoric about how the UK would form a CANZUK alliance with free movement of people and goods between these countries, forming a sort of English speaking EU.
Even if Canada and Australia don't join the EU as full members which is unlikely anyway (deeper ties are definitely on the table though), these sort of announcements should put to bed these complete and utter fantasies the UK has about leading some alternative world order where it's in charge and can go toe to toe with the EU.
Even many British would agree that Brexit was full of absolute lies, and even to this day you still see them being repeated in certain circles. These weren't even possibilities.
Australian here. Theres no way we’re joining the EU. Brussels is on the other side of the planet from Australia. Our major trading partners are nearby countries, like China, Japan, NZ, and the US. Not continental Europe. Europe is too far away.
> U.S. goods and services (exports plus imports) trade with Australia totaled an estimated $102.0 billion in 2025, up 15.6 percent ($13.8 billion) from 2024.
> Brussels and DC are almost the same distance from Canberra.
Yes. We’re not interested in joining the EU. And we’re not interested in becoming a US state.
But trade doesn’t need to go all the way to DC. By plane, Sydney to LA is about - 13.5 hours. Sydney to Brussels is 20 hours. I imagine the difference is even greater for cargo ships, which can sail directly through the pacific. I have no idea how cargo goes from Australia to Europe. That sounds like a complex route.
As for trade, the US is important but they’re not our most important trading partner. China accounts for $326 billion aud in trade annually. If your numbers are right, that’s more than our trade with the US and Europe combined.
I suspect integrating into the EU single market wouldn’t be worth it for us. We’re not part of Europe. We’re not a European country.
The article isn't about joining the EU (as the original post you replied to called it, "unlikely anyway").
> But trade doesn’t need to go all the way to DC.
Nor Brussels; Perth to Greece via the Suez cuts the time, too.
> As for trade, the US is important but they’re not our most important trading partner.
OK, but the EU and US trade with Australia roughly equivalently per the numbers, and you said "Our major trading partners are nearby countries, like China, Japan, NZ, and the US. Not continental Europe." It's just a flatly false claim.
Chill, nobody said anything about Oz joining the EU. We live in quite different time zones. A free trade agreement on the other hand might work. Canada has one if the remaining 10 EU state would bother to actually ratify it.
AN AU-EU free trade agreement has been negotiated, with the deal agreed in March 2026. It’s now making its way through both sides‘ political processes.
>Even if Canada and Australia don't join the EU as full members which is unlikely anyway
And like I point out, deeper ties are definitely on the table which is more like what will happen. The world is reorganising around US tariffs as a natural economic reaction here.
Did you read TFA (the Reuters one) that quotes the Australian trade minister? Or are you somehow more involved in determining trade agreements than the minister?
Trump has upended decades of stable trade relationships. I would not assume anything right now.
(To be clear, neither Canada nor Australia are claimed to be seeking to be EU members - but closer trade ties with the EU appear to be on the cards for both nations. When you can no longer trust the US to act in good faith, everything changes.)
I suspect it'll be expanding the current trading agreement to allow more direct investment. Canada and Australia both have lots of raw materials the EU needs. I suspect you'll see more types of worker visas (similar to the old NAFTA T1 styles that allow relatively easy sponsorship of employees).
I'd love to have full rights to live and work in the EU, but I'd be happy just being able to visit the EU as a Canadian and use the EU customs lines. I don't think Canada would go for full mobility. We're just now dealing with the backlash of too many immigrants from South Asia, a "flood" of poorer Eastern Europeans would probably rekindle that.
It is a total fantasy that Australia would throw back in with the ghost empire that is the UK. They literally have nothing to offer us apart from a figurehead head of state.
As a non-Australian, I’d say your country’s own immigration policy is fairly unwelcoming.
I get no country wants to accept a wave of 80 year olds that will be a burden to its social welfare systems.
But I find it strange one would automatically deny seasoned working professionals in excellent health with knowledge, experience, and finances to offer — just because they were born before the premier of Good Morning Australia in 1981.
Per capita, Australia lets in more migrants per year than almost any other wealthy country. Our immigration process is non political - it’s run by a government department who write, publish and enforce our policies. Which is a huge step up from many other countries we could name.
You may disagree with our selection criteria. I wish we provided exceptions for people I like too. But at a large scale, I think it’s much better that we make our rules clear and stick to them.
> Our immigration process is non political - it’s run by a government department who write, publish and enforce our policies.
This is a deeply unserious claim.
You could make a claim for it being setup as non-partisan. But non-political? Government officials aren't subject to political issues? That's a new one.
> One Nation said on Monday it would cut the number of temporary migrants in Australia by more than 750,000 over three years, targeting international students and family members of skilled migrants.
> Hanson’s announcement comes as Labor and the Coalition consider new cuts to overseas arrivals, in an increasingly charged contest before the next federal election. Hanson will hope her plan plays well in the lead-up to the Victorian state election, due in November.
The AfD is polling ~30% for federal elections[1]. The NSDAP had 18.3% in 1930[2], 37.3% in 1932[3], 33.1% in 1932[4] and 43.9% in 1933[5] (and 9x% ever after).
Yes they are still away from having the absolute majority, but please don't undersell the issue. They have a 10% difference from the second place.
> AfD is not democracy. AfD is antidemocracy even if it would get elected democratically.
Here's a fun thing language-game to try: expand your definition of "democracy" to encompass your partisan political positions, don't tell anyone, yell from the rooftops that your opponents are "anti-democratic" and banning them is "democratic."
Then observe how you only convince yourself of your own righteousness, and further alienate the people you wished to persuade.
This is certainly what could be the case, except it isn't. It was decided in 1949 what the current understanding of democracy in Germany is. You could of course decide to define democracy as broad so that it also encompasses the Athenian democracy, but that is not what we currently mean when we speak of a liberal democracy.
If party A, being labeled as communist by party B, and party B, being labeled as fascistic by party A, both agree, as well as all other parties in-between, that you are a threat to democracy, maybe you are.
If you are looking for a party that labels itself democratic and all others anti-democratic, you need to look at the AfD themself.
I think the paradox of tolerance has been interpreted by many on the left in a way that flatters them and is convenient to their political ends. Forces that actually threaten democracy and tolerance are frequently ignored or swept under the rug, while the left's political opponents are demonized as not being tolerant enough to participate in democracy so they can be summarily dismissed.
IMHO this tactic is one of the drivers in the falling trust in institutions that we see across the western world. You can't simply dismiss your opposition as not tolerant enough as a way of winning a political argument.
I'd recommend reading up on German constitutional theory and consider the historical precedent that might've lead them to realize the importance of having their democracy be defensive - something they're failing to live up to right now.
The reddit post links to: https://www.reuters.com/business/australia-on-same-page-cana...
Ooops, I meant to link Reuters, not Reddit. @mods, could you change?
Tags do not work, email mods, email in footer ("contact").
Canada has long had a very good free trade deal with the EU, which eliminated 98% of tariffs in 2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Economic_and_Tra...
Of course the 2% of items not included are pretty substantial; agricultural products with strict quotas.
There's also strict country of origin rules so if too many materials are sourced outside Canada, even if its made in Canada it can be subject to tariffs. Not to mention needing to adhere to EU standards.
Agriculture is always the hardest due to a variety of factors, including standards, but also farming is among the most subsidized and/or protected businesses in the developed world. Creating a fair and level trading system around it is difficult.
A good example is the dairy protectionism in Canada that Trump so bitterly complains about. The issue is Canada manages its system with production quotas, but the US directly and indirectly subsidizes production. Who's being more (un)fair? How do you create a trading relationship around that?
One difference is in the US they subsidize corn, which makes it cheaper domestically and the support farmers get makes them more competitive on global markets. Canada does supply control on dairy, which drives up prices domestically and prevents competition. There's a reason one is called a cartel.
That, and Quebec farmers and food security. Federal Politicians need rural votes to win elections and keep Quebec from separating. Also food security is important to any nation. And in light of what tRump has done it looks like and even more important goal.
> Creating a fair and level trading system around it is difficult.
There are no real limitations outside of dairy, poultry, and eggs; same as on the US front. If it is so difficult why is there nothing in place, aside from those three categories? Are these the only food categories that matter to people? What about the food that the animals in those categories eat?
> but the US directly and indirectly subsidizes production.
Since the Obama era, the US and Canada have had essentially the same subsidy system, save dairy, poultry, and eggs, which, as you pointed out, get their own special rules. But as you pointed out they are still subsidized indirectly via things like corn subsidies, which is where Canada and the US are now effectively on the same page (that wasn't always the case, of course, but the reforms happened a long time ago now and what went on 30 years ago doesn't mean much anymore). When cooler heads prevailed the US played fair in aligning their system to Canada's, so why isn't the same being willing to be offered in kind? Changing the diary, poultry, and egg system doesn't mean giving up subsidies, if the people want to continue to offer subsidies. The US model already offers a way to provide that. Canada already accepts that for other food products, so there is nothing unprecedented there.
Of course, it's not really about the farmers/production, is it? It is about protecting Saputo, Lactalis, and Agropur's triopoly.
> Changing the diary, poultry, and egg system doesn't mean giving up subsidies, if the people want to continue to offer subsidies.
The US subsidies tend to be more indirect, meaning that the large agri-corporations capture most of it. Farmers in the US have been struggling for years and the Canadian farmers know this (and for better or for worse have political capital at their disposal).
The reason dairy, poultry, and eggs are under Canada's system is because they are not bulk commodities that ship around the world like grains do. Canada also doesn't allow a lot of the farming methods (including hormones) that the USA does. The original aim of supply management was to smooth out the market, but of course has morphed into a cartel.
For the record, I'd love to see the dismantling of supply management the same way New Zealand did (and became an export powerhouse of processed dairy products after). I do love me some cheese and I wish the EU cheese was more economically available.
> The US subsidies tend to be more indirect, meaning that the large agri-corporations capture most of it.
It's essentially the same system, with the primary subsidy being paying 60% of crop insurance premium in Canada and 62% in the US. Of course since crop insurance is acre-based, those with the largest landholdings capture most of the subsidy, but that is equally true in Canada. It's probably true that the US has some larger farms, given the much larger arable landbase (and one of Canada's largest farms just having recently gone bankrupt!), which is what I expect you are trying to say, but I'm not sure how pertinent that is as it is still an equal payout on a relative scale.
> they are not bulk commodities that ship around the world like grains do.
Neither is milk from other animals (e.g. goats), other types of meats (e.g. pork, beef), etc. but none of these have the same system. Moreover, until 2009 tobacco was also supply managed under the same system and it is a bulk commodity that is shipped around the world. So I'm not sure your theory, as fun as it is, holds.
> Canada also doesn't allow a lot of the farming methods (including hormones) that the USA does.
It's a mixed bag. Canada puts higher value on animal welfare, but is much more lax when it comes to things like pesticides. The US doesn't allow hormone use in poultry, so that doesn't really explain what purpose supply management serves either.
> It's essentially the same system
No it's not. For bulk commodities, the US subsidies are largely commodity-specific and acre-based; Canadian support is whole-farm and income-based. US subsidies trigger when income margins fall below a set percentage; an Iowa farmer with base acres gets a price loss coverage payment whenever the national corn price is low, good year or not. A Canadian prairie farmer with a good year gets nothing regardless of wheat prices. In the US, most of the money goes to row-crop growers on large acreages, increasingly through discretionary ad hoc payments. In Canada, most money goes to prairie grain and oilseed farms through yield-triggered insurance. If you excluded dairy, US subsidies account for about ~9% of farm receipts (plus or minus a quarter percent depending on year) and Canada ~5% (long term average; payouts tend to spike in bad years).
Swinging to dairy, the US actually sets price floors for wholesale dairy and transfers revenue across processed dairy types. The US system also pays out directly to farmers if margins fall too much (the calculations of said margins is complicated, but it essentially encourages production even if prices fall due to oversupply). These subsidies have historically encouraged overproduction and consolidation and the issue has become acute as the rates of dairy consumption hasn't matched population growth due to a variety of reasons (eg veganism, milk alternatives, etc). One reason Trump has been complaining is because the US would love to have somewhere to dump said surplus.
The Canadian dairy system (which I want to make abundantly clear I'm not defending!), basically links pricing against a hard quota. The result is higher prices for consumers, and tariffs that make unique foreign cheeses very expensive.
> Neither is milk from other animals (e.g. goats), other types of meats (e.g. pork, beef), but none of these have the same system. Moreover, until 2009 tobacco was also supply managed under the same system and it is a bulk commodity that is shipped around the world. So I'm not sure your theory, as fun as it is, holds.
> ... this doesn't explain what is special about the three (once four) agriculture categories.
Because it's political! Tobacco farmers used to be a force to be reckoned with, but when smoking rates plummeted they lost a lot of said power. Other forms of dairy were niche enough not to matter. Bulk meat (beef, pork, etc) are a relatively recent phenomenon and were part of a world trade market by then, whereas chicken, milk, and eggs were considered a staple.
If you're a Canadian dairy farmer, the US system looks like it encourages production above all else and the subsidies are structured enough where a large one-off issue (herd sickness, serious equipment breakdown, etc) will wipe you out. The number of US dairy farms is down almost 80% since the 1990s and it's been driven by low margins. Canadian farmers have a lot more of a direct influence on their government (again for better or for worse).
This is what I meant when I said "Creating a fair and level trading system around it is difficult" because you run up against these interests. I would much prefer a theoretical fair trade system where Canada didn't protect its poultry/dairy and the US didn't protect its sugar (which has a lot of similarities to CA dairy supply management, though the foreign import limits are proportionately less).
> For bulk commodities, the US subsidies are largely commodity-specific and acre-based
Again, the largest component is crop insurance, which is modelled essentially the same as it is in Canada. ~60% of the premium is paid for by the government in both cases. The payout is dependent upon acres.
> The number of US dairy farms is down almost 80% since the 1990s
And 74% in Canada, for what it is worth.
> If you're a Canadian dairy farmer
Not anymore. I am among the 74%. The double-edged sword with the stability offered by supply management is that it makes borrowing much easier (effectively government-guaranteed cashflow), which pushes the price of everything higher, so the economics aren't all that great unless you sold your $100,000 per acre farm in the Netherlands or Germany to pay for it.
> the US system looks like it encourages production above all else
I am not sure I would say that. Co-ops with quota-like systems are not uncommon in the US. What their system does allow is that one guy who thinks he can undercut the prevailing market to slide in, while Canada has a legal path to put a halt to such behaviour. Maybe that's something favourable, but why only in dairy, poultry, and eggs? Isn't that something that every market would want?
> Canadian farmers have a lot more of a direct influence on their government
I do remain a Canadian farmer, though, so I would love for you to expand upon that thought.
> Because it's political!
This is quite a deviation from the bulk commodity/farming practice explanation before. Why the change in tune?
> Again, the largest component is crop insurance, which is modelled essentially the same as it is in Canada. ~60% of the premium is paid for by the government in both cases. The payout is dependent upon acres.
Only if you look at it from a permanent funding point of view. The US gov'ts portion of crop insurance in the USA amounted to $14B in 2026, but ad hoc/disaster spending (which is separate from insurance) is $26B and an alphabet soup of Farm Bill programs is $15.6B. And the bulk of the farm bill's spending (70-80%) is indirect via SNAP and other programs that Canada doesn't really have (though measuring how much if this is an actual farming subsidy is very difficult).
> And 74% in Canada, for what it is worth.
I was basing my statement on numbers I saw off of American stats (which go back further easily obtainable data), but the Canadian/US numbers I can directly pull up comparisons are from 2018 to 2025 (raw statistics Canada data is hard to come by, something the USA does much better on):
Canada: 10,679 → 9,048 = −15.3%
USA: 37,468 → 23,609 = −37.0%
The exit experience is different, though. A CA dairy farmer leaves with a capital asset in their quotas as well as any land/equipment/herd value. A US dairy farmer is liquidating just the latter. Anecdotally, I grew up in Winchester, Ontario which is a dairy hub - a lot of the farming kids I grew up with didn't want to get into farming and a lot of the family farms were sold off and a lot of them are quite comfortable. A lot of farms closer to Ottawa also got gobbled up by suburbs.
> I am not sure I would say that. Co-ops with quota-like systems are not uncommon in the US. What their system does allow is that one guy who thinks he can undercut the prevailing market to slide in, while Canada has a legal path to put a halt to such behaviour. Maybe that's something favourable, but why only in dairy, poultry, and eggs? Isn't that something that every market would want?
Again, I'm not defending supply management, but the dairy farmers are holding onto it and it's been a major pain in almost all of Canada's trade agreements. The fact that Canadian politicians are fighting so hard for it isn't because it's a better system. The one advantage of the Canadian system is that it costs the government little and you don't really contribute to it if you don't consume milk, though. But I'm for free trade and fewer subsidies all around.
> I do remain a Canadian farmer, though, so I would love for you to expand upon that thought.
Dairy farmers have put enough pressure on politicians across the political spectrum that they vigorously defend supply management that, due to its inflexibility, is a major trade headache for Canada from an industry that makes up a very small portion of economic output in Canada; it almost cost us the USMCA renegotiations and caused the CETA negotiations to last much, much longer than necessary.
Awhile back, the nominally free market federal Conservatives forced CN and CP to have minimal grain shipment numbers to deal with a bumper crop because the farmers were fuming at higher freight rail prices against other commodities (mainly oil at the time).
> This is quite a deviation from the bulk commodity/farming practice explanation before. Why the change in tune?
I don't see it as a change in tune. My original comment was that "Agriculture is always the hardest due to a variety of factors, including standards, but also farming is among the most subsidized and/or protected businesses in the developed world. Creating a fair and level trading system around it is difficult." Agriculture made up ~90% of the economy when most modern countries were founded and the political weight is often historical (and arguably constitutionally baked-in in the USA which gives smaller predominately rural states equal numbers of Senators, of which in the USA are very powerful). It's been an American political joke for ages that kissing babies is less important than kissing corn during the primaries that started in Iowa. Also, the Canadian farmers were very upset at the very limited expanded access USMCA provided us dairy farmers.
The US unequivocally supports corn production, which feeds (pun not intended) into cheaper feed for livestock. But these subsidies can be labelled as "strategic" energy independence (ignoring if that's actually the case or not). Is that fair? Should Canada then have to encourage corn production the same way? How would/do you untangle this? It's a political problem.
Untangling these into a fair trade (in the free sense) would require political capital that some countries or parties may or may not have.
I'll finish that I think we broadly agree on how things SHOULD be, but I see the barriers to getting there as not politically feasible. If it was, supply management would already be gone. It causes higher prices and the benefits are highly marginal.
> Dairy farmers have put enough pressure on politicians across the political spectrum
How? I do remember the big protests in the 90s quite well, certainly, but that was 30-some-odd years ago and when, as we saw earlier, there were 300% more diary farmers. Pressure doesn't last forever, especially as you grow into insignificance.
From what I see the pressure comes from the general public, mostly from having built up this idea that supply management keeps "hormone laden" milk out of the market, combined with the people of Quebec seeing any kind of federal "meddling" as an attack on their people.
When longstanding party favourite Maxime Bernier ran for leader of the CPC, the as you say the nominally free market party, on the platform of eliminating supply management it wasn't just dairy farmers who laughed him out of the room. It was everyone. Same thing happened with the early PPC party, before eventually pandering to the crazies to try and find any kind of support. It was quite clearly non-farmers who wanted no part in seeing an end to supply management.
> because the farmers were fuming at higher freight rail prices against other commodities
Words are only worth so much, granted, but when this occurred it was framed as being necessary for the sake of the entire Canadian economy and to preserve Canada's reputation as a trustworthy supplier. The message sent was abundantly clear that it wasn't being done to appease farmers. How do you translate that into farmers having political sway?
> How? I do remember the big protests in the 90s quite well, certainly, but that was 30-some-odd years ago and when, as we saw earlier, there were 300% more diary farmers. Pressure doesn't last forever, especially as you grow into insignificance.
They have an organized lobby that straddles a lot of important ridings in eastern Ontario and parts of Quebec. It also includes a lot of the broader dairy industry. I could accept the argument that it is no longer as powerful as it once was, but I haven't met many non-industry people who care either way. All being equal, Canadians would prefer lower prices, I think. I don't think the general public would have cared, especially if Europe flooded us with cheaper gouda or brie. There has always been a dose of anti-americanism that bounces from healthy to unhealthy and back depending on the geopolitical climate, though.
> when this occurred it was framed as being necessary for the sake of the entire Canadian economy and to preserve Canada's reputation as a trustworthy supplier. The message sent was abundantly clear that it wasn't being done to appease farmers. How do you translate that into farmers having political sway?
CN and CP were already moving records amount of grain that year (IIRC almost 40% above previous records), so to argue that it put Canada's reputation at risk rings hollow. It was because farmers were getting squeezed storing it as well as paying for higher freight costs, on top of the fact that many grain companies and farmers held onto grain from the previous harvest for a variety of reasons. Many grain farmers, who used to have to sell their wheat to the wheat board, got caught flat footed when trying to go out on their own due to then recent deregulation (I'm not convinced this last argument effected things as much as some claim, though).
An "expanded" Schengen Area that crosses the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and brings Canada, Australia (and Japan, maybe?) into the fold would be an incredible thing. I'm all for it.
It would be nice, but it's too high a bar to set, as the visa policies differ significantly between the three.
There is a real danger the Schengen agreement itself will collapse in the upcoming years - Germany is already ignoring both the Schengen agreement and its own courts by keeping border controls.
It has always surprised me that the 'free world', NATO countries, developed countries (including Japan, Taiwan, Australia), however one wants to call them, do not have at least free trade, if not free movement of people and capital, between them.
A travesty, IMO. And a great loss making us all poorer. Not a patchwork of point-to-point free trade agreements, but several hub agreements that countries join, and, in time, the hubs agree to free trade between them too.
I guess that's what the EU is trying to be.
The EU is specifically European - its in the name. Many of the arguments for the Eu that came up during Brexit were based on the importance of geographical proximity and shared culture.
> The EU is specifically European - its in the name.
I don't disagree, but by this standard North Korea is a democratic republic, and Turkey's membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a bit odd.
The EU has also been pushing for free trade agreements, tho (the Canada one, mercosur, the abortive US one).
Yes,but it also does not want more than free trade with anyone outside Europe.
The politics of this is grindingly difficult; people think of "them and us", not "we're all together in three free world". Achieving free trade means either dismantling all the little market carve-outs that local politics relies on, or enshrining them in the collective (EU farming policy).
Imagine trying to integrate the politics of Japanese rice farming into the CAP.
The schengen zone is exactly this hub agreement isn't it?
IIRC schengen zone is about people, not about goods. There are like 10 almost overlaping zones. This is a map recently posted by amenghra:
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1tda6wl/european_in...
Even this one understates it; it’s missing the special customs zone with Turkey.
Is Schen-zen a city in China?
Edit: The OP wrote 'schenzen' instead of 'schengen' before. That was the joke. Invisible now.
Amazing, let's please do Japan and Taiwan next.
Japan ambassador in Romania said just that in an interview.
Russia and the US seek to expand by invasion, at the same time there are NINE countries with a stated ambition to join the European Union, and now there seem to be even more countries who want to "more closely align" with the EU (whatever that means).
Whenever countries consider their needs and desires, and what they want their country to be, they look at the countries of Europe - not at Russia, not at the US, and not at China.
Japan and Taiwan are culturally very foreign unlike Australia and Canada. If we add them we might as well add the whole globe.
LOL Canada should seek deeper internal alliances first. Since 2015, every year the QoL gets worse.
There is a group of people in canada which takes care of QoL and another group of people taking care of external relationships and trade.
And normally this helps a country?
Why not both? Perfection is the enemy of good.
More good reliable friends is always better, and fuck the unreliable backstabbing ones as much as possible and reasonable, future will sort out details. World is not static, alliances change and we may revert in future if US population decides it wants to be ruled over by more reasonable, respectable and kind people.
Is the declining QoL in the room right now?
No, it's in the increasingly growing tent cities in my town, and among the junkies that have taken over downtown Ottawa. Glad to hear you're doing well, though.
Sounds like a municipal or (perhaps) a provincial issue.
Housing is a municipal jurisdiction, healthcare is a provincial jurisdiction and immigration (direct, temporary, students, refugees) is a federal jurisdiction (except Quebec has its own immigration jurisdiction).
Bringing in millions of people in a short time without coordination with other jurisdictions to manage housing demands, healthcare demands and needed infrastructure upgrades was grossly incompetent.
Not quite on the epic scale of incompetence as Chairman Mao and eliminating the Sparrow (in terms of consequences) but equally as idiotic in terms of narrow minded thinking.
You're arguing that the immigrants are the reason ottawa has a drug and tent problem?
More people leads to more competition in the job market and housing space. There's no universe in which they are not linked. It's a natural consequence of near 20% population growth in a decade
... and invoking Chairman Mao in the same breath???
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This is a positive sign: free-minded, aligned, progressive nations clustering together. Suggested next steps are to form a single market, military, issue common trade currency, move off US dollar, stop trading with the US, thereby restoring sovereignty and enacting your own laws etc.
All, of course, is a ramp to eventually shunning the US: the global bully.
Yes, we can!
From the Reuters article:
> Australia and the European Union signed a free trade agreement in March after eight years of negotiations, removing tariffs on almost all goods and potentially easing EU access to Australian critical minerals.
Reuters left out the most interesting part which is to allow service providers to work on either side and four year visas (which include work) in both directions.
Step 0: be included in Eurovision
Australia 2015 √
Canada 2027 √
Canada doesn't even have free trade internally... It's literally easier to sell to the US or EU than to another province.
Food and especially liquor continue to have stupid barriers between provinces. But intra-provincial trade increases every year and the CMRA legislation from last year should improve that.
There are no tariffs between Canadian provinces and never have been.
> There are no tariffs between Canadian provinces and never have been.
Did I say there were?
No. You claimed Canada doesn't have free trade internally. The most common barriers to free trade are tariffs. IME tariffs and duties are what most people think of as non-free trade. Witness the current US-Canada trade war. I can order lots of things from all around the world and the main resistance to me doing that are tariffs and duties, wouldn't you agree?
I'm clarifying that the trade barriers on things like liquor and food between Canadian provinces are regulations, not tariffs.
Trade barriers are trade barriers. Free trade means no barriers, not no tariffs specifically. Anything that makes doing business in another province more difficult than regular operation in your own province is a barrier to trade.
Agree completely. The most common barriers to trade are tariffs and I'm glad we don't have those within Canada. The next most common barriers are regulatory and legislative and we've got those but the good news is (unlike the US-Canada trend lately) those barriers are diminishing (at a government pace) in a consistent trend over time.
I'm not aware of steps backwards (as in US-Canada relations) where barriers between provinces increased. Am I wrong to be optimistic?
It'd depend on what you're selling, surely? I've never had any problems of this sort with basic retail product, for example
Well, let's say you sell online, no matter what you're selling, you need to apply the PST/HST of the province the buyer's address is in. And then you need to file a tax return for every province you sell to. Now some provinces have a sales threshold under which you don't need to do a separate tax return, others don't. Some have an HST collected by the Federal government, others don't. And all the PST/HST rates are different. This also applies to digital goods, SaaS, etc...
The US has higher thresholds in every state and no federal sales tax, and buyers pay the duties.
PRC's trade surplus is pushing for a wide customs union. This is a part of this trend.
For me the most striking thing about this was before the Brexit referendum there was rhetoric about how the UK would form a CANZUK alliance with free movement of people and goods between these countries, forming a sort of English speaking EU.
Even if Canada and Australia don't join the EU as full members which is unlikely anyway (deeper ties are definitely on the table though), these sort of announcements should put to bed these complete and utter fantasies the UK has about leading some alternative world order where it's in charge and can go toe to toe with the EU.
https://boris-johnson.com/2013/08/25/the-aussies-are-just-li...
https://www.ippr.org/articles/could-the-idea-of-the-anglosph...
Even many British would agree that Brexit was full of absolute lies, and even to this day you still see them being repeated in certain circles. These weren't even possibilities.
Australian here. Theres no way we’re joining the EU. Brussels is on the other side of the planet from Australia. Our major trading partners are nearby countries, like China, Japan, NZ, and the US. Not continental Europe. Europe is too far away.
Brussels and DC are almost the same distance from Canberra.
(Also Australian, but living in the US.)
https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/southeast-asia-pacific/au...
> U.S. goods and services (exports plus imports) trade with Australia totaled an estimated $102.0 billion in 2025, up 15.6 percent ($13.8 billion) from 2024.
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/eu-australia...
> In 2024, trade in goods and services between the European Union and Australia was worth over €91 billion.
(That's $105B in FreedomBucks, and excludes the UK.)
> Brussels and DC are almost the same distance from Canberra.
Yes. We’re not interested in joining the EU. And we’re not interested in becoming a US state.
But trade doesn’t need to go all the way to DC. By plane, Sydney to LA is about - 13.5 hours. Sydney to Brussels is 20 hours. I imagine the difference is even greater for cargo ships, which can sail directly through the pacific. I have no idea how cargo goes from Australia to Europe. That sounds like a complex route.
As for trade, the US is important but they’re not our most important trading partner. China accounts for $326 billion aud in trade annually. If your numbers are right, that’s more than our trade with the US and Europe combined.
I suspect integrating into the EU single market wouldn’t be worth it for us. We’re not part of Europe. We’re not a European country.
https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/china/china-country-brief
> We’re not interested in joining the EU.
The article isn't about joining the EU (as the original post you replied to called it, "unlikely anyway").
> But trade doesn’t need to go all the way to DC.
Nor Brussels; Perth to Greece via the Suez cuts the time, too.
> As for trade, the US is important but they’re not our most important trading partner.
OK, but the EU and US trade with Australia roughly equivalently per the numbers, and you said "Our major trading partners are nearby countries, like China, Japan, NZ, and the US. Not continental Europe." It's just a flatly false claim.
Chill, nobody said anything about Oz joining the EU. We live in quite different time zones. A free trade agreement on the other hand might work. Canada has one if the remaining 10 EU state would bother to actually ratify it.
AN AU-EU free trade agreement has been negotiated, with the deal agreed in March 2026. It’s now making its way through both sides‘ political processes.
https://commission.europa.eu/topics/trade/eu-australia-trade...
https://www.austrade.gov.au/en/how-we-can-help-you/australia...
You might have missed this bit:
>Even if Canada and Australia don't join the EU as full members which is unlikely anyway
And like I point out, deeper ties are definitely on the table which is more like what will happen. The world is reorganising around US tariffs as a natural economic reaction here.
Did you read TFA (the Reuters one) that quotes the Australian trade minister? Or are you somehow more involved in determining trade agreements than the minister?
Trump has upended decades of stable trade relationships. I would not assume anything right now.
(To be clear, neither Canada nor Australia are claimed to be seeking to be EU members - but closer trade ties with the EU appear to be on the cards for both nations. When you can no longer trust the US to act in good faith, everything changes.)
I suspect it'll be expanding the current trading agreement to allow more direct investment. Canada and Australia both have lots of raw materials the EU needs. I suspect you'll see more types of worker visas (similar to the old NAFTA T1 styles that allow relatively easy sponsorship of employees).
I'd love to have full rights to live and work in the EU, but I'd be happy just being able to visit the EU as a Canadian and use the EU customs lines. I don't think Canada would go for full mobility. We're just now dealing with the backlash of too many immigrants from South Asia, a "flood" of poorer Eastern Europeans would probably rekindle that.
It is a total fantasy that Australia would throw back in with the ghost empire that is the UK. They literally have nothing to offer us apart from a figurehead head of state.
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You have the same right to apply for asylum.
"as an Australian" claims of escaping persecution and violence might be slightly harder to sustain. That's a good thing for Australia.
You'd both have the same rights.
I suspect you know this, which is why you pivoted from "right to live" to "would be welcomed", which are pretty clearly not the same thing.
As a non-Australian, I’d say your country’s own immigration policy is fairly unwelcoming.
I get no country wants to accept a wave of 80 year olds that will be a burden to its social welfare systems.
But I find it strange one would automatically deny seasoned working professionals in excellent health with knowledge, experience, and finances to offer — just because they were born before the premier of Good Morning Australia in 1981.
Per capita, Australia lets in more migrants per year than almost any other wealthy country. Our immigration process is non political - it’s run by a government department who write, publish and enforce our policies. Which is a huge step up from many other countries we could name.
You may disagree with our selection criteria. I wish we provided exceptions for people I like too. But at a large scale, I think it’s much better that we make our rules clear and stick to them.
> Our immigration process is non political - it’s run by a government department who write, publish and enforce our policies.
This is a deeply unserious claim.
You could make a claim for it being setup as non-partisan. But non-political? Government officials aren't subject to political issues? That's a new one.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/sep/14/one-n...
> One Nation said on Monday it would cut the number of temporary migrants in Australia by more than 750,000 over three years, targeting international students and family members of skilled migrants.
> Hanson’s announcement comes as Labor and the Coalition consider new cuts to overseas arrivals, in an increasingly charged contest before the next federal election. Hanson will hope her plan plays well in the lead-up to the Victorian state election, due in November.
Reducing the quota would be a political act, yes?
Sorry, you’re right I misspoke. Non partisan.
West Indian migration put an end to that[0]. Unintended side effect of good old British racism.
[0] https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/the-...
How democratic (not)
"Even if Canada and Australia don't join the EU as full members"
The European project is bigger than the EU - that's just the central core.
There's also the EFTA, EEA, CEFTA, CU, Eurozone, Shengen, CoE, and Swiss-style bilateral treaties.
See https://thisbugslife.com/2021/05/10/graphic-representation-o...
Canada can easily find a home one of these.
You might have missed this bit:
>deeper ties are definitely on the table though
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Too bad those countries are so far apart even if they've once been part of the same empire.
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And you want to indicate what with your smile?
AfD won in a marginal state and it's a very, very long way for them to win federal elections in Germany.
The AfD is polling ~30% for federal elections[1]. The NSDAP had 18.3% in 1930[2], 37.3% in 1932[3], 33.1% in 1932[4] and 43.9% in 1933[5] (and 9x% ever after).
Yes they are still away from having the absolute majority, but please don't undersell the issue. They have a 10% difference from the second place.
Hopefully defensive democracy finally shows its teeth and they come through with the long-overdue ban of this fascist party.
Democracy is when the government does what I want!
No but a democracy should protect democracy.
AfD is concluding with russia, a country which poisned people on EU ground.
AfD also has plenty of real nazis doing nazi shit and AfD is not excluding them.
AfD is not democracy. AfD is antidemocracy even if it would get elected democratically.
> AfD is not democracy. AfD is antidemocracy even if it would get elected democratically.
Here's a fun thing language-game to try: expand your definition of "democracy" to encompass your partisan political positions, don't tell anyone, yell from the rooftops that your opponents are "anti-democratic" and banning them is "democratic."
Then observe how you only convince yourself of your own righteousness, and further alienate the people you wished to persuade.
AfD is a facist party and anti-democratic.
AfD fights against mechanism we have in place to protect the democracy.
Has nothing to do with my own righteousness. AfD could easily do things against all of this garbage and they don't.
This is certainly what could be the case, except it isn't. It was decided in 1949 what the current understanding of democracy in Germany is. You could of course decide to define democracy as broad so that it also encompasses the Athenian democracy, but that is not what we currently mean when we speak of a liberal democracy.
If party A, being labeled as communist by party B, and party B, being labeled as fascistic by party A, both agree, as well as all other parties in-between, that you are a threat to democracy, maybe you are.
If you are looking for a party that labels itself democratic and all others anti-democratic, you need to look at the AfD themself.
Democracy isn't a dictatorship of the majority!
Sometimes, cultures democratically decide "hey we shouldn't be responsible for another World War and Holocaust" is worth legislating.
Sometimes, democracy needs defending from people using its privileges to get rid of it.
> Democracy is when the government does what I want!
One can (should?) tolerate a lot in an open, democratic society, but not (necessarily) everything:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Then there's H.L. Mencken old line:
* “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
I think the paradox of tolerance has been interpreted by many on the left in a way that flatters them and is convenient to their political ends. Forces that actually threaten democracy and tolerance are frequently ignored or swept under the rug, while the left's political opponents are demonized as not being tolerant enough to participate in democracy so they can be summarily dismissed.
IMHO this tactic is one of the drivers in the falling trust in institutions that we see across the western world. You can't simply dismiss your opposition as not tolerant enough as a way of winning a political argument.
I agree, a predicate of non-tolerance or non-democraticness should be in the conclusion of an argument, not in it's assertion or justification.
I'd recommend reading up on German constitutional theory and consider the historical precedent that might've lead them to realize the importance of having their democracy be defensive - something they're failing to live up to right now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_democracy
I'd say the majority doesn't want AfD, otherwise they would have voted for them. So let's not claim what is not due.
Good point. We should abolish any party that can't win an election.
Their electoral performance is irrelevant to their legality under Art 9 GG.
Tyranny is a cancer and Managed Democracy is the cure!
Other countries may not have learned the lessons of history Germany tried to rectify with Art 9 Par 2 GG, as is evident by comments like these.
Unfortunately, the Germans themselves have forgotten. Never Forget rings hollow these days.
Australia is also trying to ban their equivalent political party, so both countries are on the same page still:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/sep/08/neo-n...
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