Bruce Anderson

And by that, I mean we're getting close to that moment where both countries need to decide what it is they're going to say they're doing with Kuzma.

I think that the Americans, from everything that I can tell, do want to maintain a North American free trade agreement of one variety or another.

I think they do want to.

make sure that they apply as much pressure and leverage on Canada as they can in the run up to those more formal conversations.

I think they are probably also hearing from U.S.

defense industry suppliers concerns about whether Canada and other countries are looking at options that don't involve buying military equipment with much larger

military budgets than has been the case before.

Not buying from American companies is a significant economic issue, I think, for America, or at least for the American defense industry.

And my assumption is that this has probably got something to do with that, something to do with wanting to make sure that Canada hears America saying things like,

We want to be partners with you, but don't do things that make us uncomfortable.

We've heard this before.

We heard it about doing a deal with China for a small amount of cars and a large amount of canola.

Only then watched President Trump completely ignore what he said about the perils of doing deal with China and say, I'm going to go over it and I'm going to do trillions of dollars of stuff with China, which in the end didn't turn out to be possible to do.

But

You know, last point for me, I read something today where I think it was a Reuters story, and they were quoting an unnamed Pentagon official and saying, you know, that they were doubling down on this concern about Canada and saying, you know, we're just not feeling that Canada is ready to be a, in quotes, credible security partner.

And for me, the irony of the American government

talking about credible security partners when they are the least credible security partner probably in the world right now.

It's just remarkable that the arms of the American government can say things like that and think that the rest of the world will go, oh.

all right, you've scared us now.

We better do whatever it is that you say, because if we do what you say, you'll stop berating us or good things will happen on a mutual basis.