Update on Canada Worries

American news coverage of the situation in Canada is kinda' lousy. You can dig (and I do), but I'm not too concerned that you do at this point (so, no links, for now). Here's some things I've learned.

• The demonstrations, now loosely called "Freedom Convoys" are ongoing.
• Ottawa, Canada's capital, is still tied up.
• There seems to be considerable grass roots support for the demonstrations (look for videos of people delivering diesel fuel to protesters). 
• The leadership of the demonstrations has been uncovered to be the fairly routine sort of anti-vax, Trumpy, conspiracy believing people we've gotten used to over the last few years. But the rank and file demonstrators do not seem to buy into most of that: they're mostly concerned about being told to do something they think is, at best, incoherent.
• The demonstrations have spread. I talked about Ottawa and the I-15 crossing last week. Then the Ambassador Bridge going into Detroit was blocked (this is the largest border crossing). This has been unblocked without violence. Another blockage has popped up on a secondary route into Washington.
• A great deal of money has been raised through social media to support the demonstrations. There is a suspicion that a lot of this is coming from the U.S. I'm not sure we should be surprised at that. While the demonstrations are in Canada, they are about both countries, and given out population is 9 times bigger, it stands to reason that interested Americans would contribute a lot of money.

OK. So here's the weird thing they don't tell you. Because of its unique evolution, Canada is even more federal than the U.S.

In this context, federal means that the second tier of government (states here, provinces there) has a lot of power. In fact, Canadian provinces are in many ways more powerful than American states. 

As to the history, some of you probably know that Quebec (the second biggest province) has come pretty close to seceding amicably a couple of times over the last 50 years. And polls show Albertans have wanted to join the U.S. for decades. 

Part of what is going on there is that the colonies that formed Canada were never united against England. So when they were united as a country (in 1867) they retained a lot of independence and direct ties to London. For example, the province of Newfoundland was still a colony until 1949.

This relates back to why the crossing into Detroit is now open. This is because Ontario wants it open, and made it so. Why? Macroeconomics: the auto industry (based in Detroit) has enormous trade relations with Ontario.† Shutting that bridge brought Detroit and Ontario to a grinding halt. And you've probably seen those memes pointing out that a majority of Canadians live very close to the U.S. border.

The crossings in Alberta and British Columbia are still closed because those provinces are more or less permitting the protests to continue. So this is a lot more nationally divisive than Americans recognize.

The central government of Prime Minister Trudeau is not powerless in all this, but is probably a lot less powerful than Biden would be in the same situation. Today, Trudeau authorized the use of an emergencies act precisely because he needs more avenues to apply what power he has.

† I grew up in Buffalo. The quicker way to get from Buffalo (and everywhere to the east) to Detroit (and many points to the west including Chicago) is to go through Canada.