The US doesn't care, and the rest of the world is unable to hold them accountable, which is also why the US doesn't care.
Trump literally joked about committing war crimes in Venezuela in his first state of the union speech this time around. A room full of American politicians laughed alongside him. A few democrats wrote an angry letter.
So, I seem to recall that early in the trade dispute, the Ford government in Ontario ripped up a Starlink deal they'd been working on, making a big show about not giving them more leverage. The next week, Rogers inked a deal with Starlink to provide satellite peering/connections to their customers, and then the Ontario government could get that service through a "Canadian" telco.
Point being, I don't believe a word our government says when it comes to their intentions with regards to detangling from US tech oligarchs, especially when they're leaning on companies like Bell, Rogers and Telus, which are massively dependent on US tech oligarchs. They'll "build up" a "sovereign" internet setup, by outsourcing the work to either American companies directly, or to Canadian companies acting as proxies for American companies to spare some optics. Sorta like how "Telus" doen't actually have Canadian sovereign email, they just resell google or microsoft. Hell, Telus's VoIP product, "Business Connect", is just a rebrand of Ring Central. They literally point users to the Ring Central manuals, because our big rich hugely profitable mighty telco, can't even write/maintain their own branded documentation. Even routes through RC servers down south for most calls.
It's also likely worth highlighting that some of those big telcos, like Telus, have like $19.5 billion in long term debt, with a market cap of like $20 billion. There's talk of big overhauls being required for Telus, as it's become too outsourced/unfocused, and its debt's out of control. But hey, Carney just announced a government bailout! Yay, liberal hand outs to big business! Canada foots the bill for the infrastructure, the Telcos get the profits, and it sounds like they'll get to completely write off taxes for a while too.
As for people in this thread mentioning things like "Good the US shouldn't control the internet", I don't think they really grasp the state that Canada's internet is in. There are practically no east west data cables / redundancy around, we just use the US's backbone most of the time. Almost all of our software reaches south for updates / patches etc, as the US doesn't put any of those things into Canada, even on proxy boxes -- but also, it's way faster for a server in Vancouver to grab updates from Seattle, than it is to route data to the east coast. This is partly due to our country having crazy bad population distributions, with metropolitan areas like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal each having more people than entire provinces such as Manitoba and Sask -- it's nearly impossible to justify huge infrastructure spends in communities of like 500-1000 people. At best, this is likely to fill that infrastructure gap a bit -- but it won't change our dependency on US tech in a more practical way.
It's been like 2 years+ of this shit, and we still can't get something like a fairphone through the regular telcos -- like 99% of cell phones in Canada are Google or Apple, totally entrenched in those ecosystems. That's how much the telcos care about Data Sovereignty/Canada.
You're accusing me of being a racist / bigot, just because I say that topics such as the residential school system are not 'safe' work appropriate topics? Seriously? What fantasy world do you live in?
The CBC / public funding is partially dependent on US funding via equity programs. I'm not sure how the APTN is funded, but I'd be interested to know if they're self-sufficient, or if they rely on funding via public sources, which ultimately come from US sources as well. And as for whether they'd make it or not, what happened to other similar shows when Netflix's funding disappeared? They've disappeared, because their survival is dependent on the US funding they receive.
So, objectively, you're wrong on the banking side. And unless you have some actual experience in that realm to offer up, I can't really argue with you as you're arguing on theoretical imagination as to how the systems work, and I'm basing my viewpoint in how it actually works through experience working in that industry. Don't be bitter that other people have had more experience in an industry than you, and can speak with more authority.
"You mean you don't". I'm the one who's looking at the bigger aggregate pictures, and highlighting things like Alberta's "general" support of Smith. Because I'm thinking outside my own perspective, and looking for broader societal data points to base my comments on. And because I can see most Canadians around me, doing/having done less to excise low-hanging US fruit type connections from their lives -- and when asked, they don't give a shit about trade stuff, they mostly just care to have their creature comforts / perks. Again, the basic fact that Canada is content to keep using / supporting all US services "on aggregate", indicates we don't give that much of a fuck about what's going on.; we don't care that the USA is "attacking us", if caring means we need to consider ditching Microsoft. Alberta doesn't care that their prem is a traitor, they still support her and trumpian style conservativism. Like she even spins it as "an approach that gets us better treatment from America!" .... backstabbing the rest of Canada! And Alberta generally shrugs.
You keep circling back and making these pissant character attacks against me, often using trite online-verbiage that hints at your own character. I think I'll finally follow through and be ignoring this from now on. If you'd like to make some final closing personal attacks, have at it.
Putting context/structure in to what I generally would consider mainstream is not moving the goalposts. It's providing clarity on my position, and the rationale that I use to underpin it -- sorta like what you were doing when you tried to frame 'mainstream' as "how many countries does it show in" in the prior post. I don't consider a show mainstream unless it's gotten enough 'buzz' to be discussed broadly in public -- the small-talk at the office test is a good measure of that, especially as only things that are office-appropriate (acceptable broadly by the public) are kosher topics in most offices. You can't exactly talk about risky stuff / niche interests without stepping on peoples feelings -- having something like an open discussion in an office of something like the Residential School system, is an HR minefield. Similarly, "porn" isn't mainstream to me, because it's not openly discussed -- even if it's shown in many countries, meeting your criteria.
Who pays matters. Would North of North be made without that cheque getting cut? If not, then its existence is dependent on USA funding/capital/investment. Cutting ties to the USA means giving up that funding. If there are businesses in Canada that are totally dependent on US money in other industries, and cutting the US ties will kill those businesses, I'd say they were effectively controlled by the US market too. That's.... sorta one of the big, primary problems with what's going on. So much of our stuff is dependent on US trade/money.
I didn't drag out some wikipedia on OSFI. I worked in the banking sector, or auditing that sector, for decades. I've literally spoken to regulators / had meetings with them. I've watched how things like mergers, subsidiaries and other connected companies are treated by regulators. But please, do tell me what your experience is in the industry, such that you know better?
Danielle Smiths antics are a symptom of the temperament of Albertans -- just like Donald Trump is a symptom of the temperament of general Americans. If you can get pissed off at America, or make generalisations about the state of current American culture based on their "loudest political clown", you can do the same with Alberta.
Did I say the country falls apart, or are you attempting to attribute words/concepts to me that are laughable, in an attempt to discredit my perfectly reasonable position? I said that Canadians don't have the same resolve, and that they'd rather maintain their current standard of living, likely to the point that they'd accept huge compromises on things like trade. Our government can't function without Windows/Microsoft and the other big tech companies -- or rather, the downgrade in functionality would be an intolerable trade off for the electorate, compared to caving on trade items -- so they'd vote in people to cave.
Know nothing about business -- ok, sure. Supply chain and source of funds matter. Netflix, a foreign company, funding a Canadian production is still arguably something that'd fall into the foreign-made content bucket. Specifically, it would fall into that bucket because we're loosely discussing cutting American influence on Canadian content/media -- you can't take their money to make shows, if you're cutting ties, so shows like North of North and other "Netflix" content would face more uncertain futures. It's a valid criticism. Sorta like, if you're trying to excise American influences from your day to day, you'd avoid McDonalds -- even though the staff working there are generally Canadians. Or if you saw a show funded by China, made by Canadian chinese people, supporting China's government values within a Canadian context, you likely wouldn't think it Canadian / free from undue foreign influence.
Shows 'showing' in multiple countries doesn't make them mainstream -- it's difficult to define what is mainstream these days, given how segmented the viewing markets are, and how captive audiences are to the 'one new show' that shows up on their streams that week. Viewership stats would count, especially if they broke down demographic splits, but those are very hard to come by -- they're also not very 'organic'. In the 'old days', shows that were / are mainstream are things that got discussed at the office -- Seinfeld, Friends in the 90s were frequently brought up. Shows that have themes, characters and plots that can cut across demographic segments and foster small talk banter in an office between the 50 year old accounting clerk and the 20 year old newbie. Some shows get brought up these days too -- but typically not shows like the ones you're listing. Likely partly because they are niche demographic areas that cannot be discussed openly without members outside that niche being accused of this or that.
In regards to banks selling payment networks -- you do understand that banks / financial institutions are regulated entities, with the Federal Government regulating banks, and the Provincial Government regulating Credit Unions. These organisations generally can't do shit without clearing it with regulators, without clearing it with the government. Things like their Deposit insurance require them to obey the governments demands -- the Credit Unions in BC have basically all been getting forced to merge by the government, for example. Like "Why didn't Canada have the same sub prime mortgage nightmare as the USA in 2008?" --> Because the banks werent allowed to do subprime mortgages, because the government told them what they could, and couldn't, do. I may know nothing about business according to you, but I do know how that industry generally works.
As for Alberta, YOU may think one way or another about their premier. But they're holding a fuckin referendum on sovereignty, at a ridiculous point in time. With their government having basically leaned on the scales the whole way to make it happen. And the province still, on aggregate, supports conservatives like PP, and support Danielle Smith's party over the competition. So, you know, broaden your scope a little, think outside your own little bloody box, and see what's going on with others in the province. They have a traitor leader, and they still support her. They still go along with her various bullshit initiatives.
And lastly, if you can't understand that a reduction in product options is a reduction in the general standard of living, I think this conversation is at its end. You're arguing against what's essentially a self-proving statement, Fewer choices/options is practically part of the definition of a lower standard of living. You're either failing to grasp basic concepts, or you're intentionally just trolling / trying to pick fights and be anal about stupid shit. Neither possibility is particularly interesting, nor enticing to prolong this further.
You're significantly over-estimating the significance of our exports to the USA, to the USA. Canada, as a country, is heavily reliant on trade One of the biggest problems "buy Canadian" movements have, is finding actual Canadian products -- even if we 'replace' the USA as a source, we're still heavily reliant on trade. It's tied to like 2/3s of every dollar earned in Canada, or something ridiculous along those lines. Like Alberta's busy cozying up to Trump, because more of Alberta's GDP is based on US Trade, than it is on the Canadian market. We only refine half of the oil we use domestically, we import the other half we use, while selling something like 2-3 times the amount we use domestically to foreign buyers like the USA and China: ie. we don't even have the refining capability to cover our domestic market, and instead we trade a huge surplus of crude oil, while buying our domestic mfg shortfall up on the market....so even one of our 'bigger' industries is unable to provide for the domestic market without foreign assistance / sources.
That's not the case in the states, where they're more self-sufficient overall, using products / services that they make themselves.
And really, that "services" part is the real major point that almost all of these 'trade' negotiations are missing. There's a trade deficit on goods, but if services are included, we send heaps of money to the USA annually, and our service industry is absolutely saturated with US companies, who've killed off any real Canadian competition. Not only does bringing in the services trade numbers push things into the US's favour, but it also highlights how boned Canada is in general, should we have a "hard cut" of relations with the USA. Our government would literally shut down if Microsoft were forced to pull the plug on the Canadian market.
Didn't refute anything? My first comment spoke directly to the diminished options for main stream shows / shows with broader public appeal. Shows like North of North and Heated Rivalry are great to see in the mix, but they're not really geared towards main stream interests -- they focus on plots and characters that are 'niche', and which generally have less appeal/interest to the broader public. North of North is also a Netflix series, so that's arguably American origin content -- it's one of those series that gets made, and aggressively marketed via algorithms, to meet government regulated content quotas. Even more, that there's a large chunk of content that gets clipped, my point still remains valid that the standard of living / quality of life is diminished by clipping American content -- by very definition, less choice/options, is a downgrade for Canadians. What I'd been pointing out with the 'type' of content delivered by the CBC, is that the cut in content when cutting American media, is largely mainstream / content popular with the majority of Canadians -- and your examples of niche content for specific demographics, available on the cbc, isn't enough to make up that shortfall.
My second note was broad stroke refutation of everything you're trying to highlight, by simply pointing out that while you may be pontificating about this and that online, the cold hard truth is that Canadians aren't moving in great numbers to clip things like American media/American streaming services, etc. You can armchair jockey all you want, but the boots on the ground (payment cards in the hands?) say that us Canadians don't really care enough about Trump's tariffs/trade shenanigans, nor about his administration's policies, to reduce our options for streaming on apple or netflix or whatever, nor are people boycotting Amazon. Our creature comforts and convenience come first in our priority lists. Piss and moan about other options being around all you want, they're not convenient enough, or high enough quality, for general Canadians to switch.
We'd rather sell the Americans our payment networks / critical infrastructure, and then the next week make a big blustery media storm about trade deals falling through because of sovereignty. We collectively shrug and make excuses for people like Danielle Smith, who runs to the USA to discuss trade rather than siding with her Canadian counterparts - Albertans, who are Canadians, still support her it seems. We are nowhere near as resilient / self-reliant as people seem to pretend at times, and there's still no real indication that the public has moved aggressively away from American service providers, nor any indication that they would.
I'll just respond with two things, then I'll likely be ignoring this thread --
First, I have 'tried' to watch CBC Gem and other similar broadcasting, so I'm familiar with at least some of the shows you mentioned. But most were pretty niche market and not that entertaining -- Canada's public broadcaster funding and priority towards equity concerns means that most of the publicly funded programs in Canada speak directly to niche demographic segments, and are not intended for broad general appeal. Something like Heated Rivalry is a story worth telling, one that would obviously be lauded by a 'progressive' leaning film industry, but don't expect "most" straight guys to gush / get excited about a gay romance series. Shows with Indigenous themes are similar, though they also have overt negative depictions of non-first nations, with very stereotyped/racist characters -- again, content that's fine to produce for a niche market, but don't expect it to be something the people gettin slagged are all giddy to spend an evening watching.
Second, my point regarding Canadians resolve is proven by how many of us choose to continue to use things like Windows, Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Google, Tesla, etc. These companies are directly involved with the Trump administration, Musk even ran a government department dedicated to pilfering government data for the right-wing agenda. He did Nazi salutes on the world stage. Canadians keep buying and driving around in Teslas. They keep using US products and services. Carney hires Americans for cabinet assistants. We sell Moneris, a huge Canadian payment network to US Private Equity, and we all shrug. Our government runs on Microsoft cloud products, with data exposed to Microsoft/US Government agencies, and we accept our lack of privacy in exchange for convenience. That's really all the evidence / rebuttal I need to demonstrate my point.
American and Canadian culture is a lot more similar, than Canadian and most other cultures -- denying that is pretty silly, even with the current issues ongoing.
The amount, and quality, of the content from other sources is lower than from the USA. I think I mentioned in the earlier post that it's a matter of accepting a diminished quality of life / standard of living -- a reduction in the quality / variety is just that, even if there are 'some' replacement options around.
Subtitled shows aren't the same as hearing your native language spoken in media. It's one reason immigrant parents are often very eager to get media from their home country / in their home language, as it's better to expose their kids to the language/culture of their homeland if they want to maintain some ties.
Endorsing/embracing wide-spread piracy of IP would likely be very bad for Canada on the whole. Piracy to me is 'fine' in moderation and based on subjective individual situations, but if applied broadly to the entire population as a standard, it'd be a negative.
Ideally, Canada would make more content for Canada. But I don't think we realistically have the market size for that.
Ah, then your card payments may also be generally 'good' for all I know, I'm not too familiar with how outsourced many European countries are in this regard.
It's not a matter of whether Canadians would be 'fine', it's a matter of whether they'd be prepared to lower their standard of living by using other services, particularly ones from other countries, often ones that don't speak english, nor understand Canada's culture.
Like Canada's semi unique as a country in that almost all of our goods and services are made outside the country. We effectively export raw materials to the USA, and use the profit from that to buy manufactured goods and services from the USA and elsewhere. Even amidst all this trade chaos, we're still mostly looking at how to do things offshore / not do it ourselves -- that sort of shows us the general temperament of 'contemporary' Canadians, I think.
Those still touch payment networks. Debit cards are basically cards from Payment networks that are partnered with Banks/Credit Unions. PSP/DC Payments is an example of a payment network, Everlink, Interac, Exchange, Cirrus, etc. Seeing as Carney/Canada are ok selling off those payment networks to US Private Equity, you're going to always be somewhat dependent at this point on US services. Like I'd bet you that most of Interac, even though it's "Canadian", is running in US Cloud platforms like Azure and AWS, meaning it's 'realistically' fair game for US AI harvesting etc. Canadian businesses that try to pretend they're 'good' on this front will almost always cite privacy legislation compliance, to things like "Data residency" -- pretending as though just because a copy of the data is stored in Canada, that it isn't exposed/leveraged/dependent on US/foreign services.
It isn't until the very end of the article that they even bother to discuss the obvious approach to the fee on transactions -- a flat rate fee. Like I know some of the flat rate fees in Canada are around $0.04 per transaction -- no matter the dollar value of the transaction. Which is a huge profit margin, really, for banks -- cause they'll charge people like $3 if you're not their customer at an ATM, even though your withdrawal only costs them $0.04-$0.10 in network fees.
Depending on the financial institution, that sort of app function would be outsourced to a third party anyhow. Payment networks are semi-separate from banks/financial institutions, and they're generally involved in digital wallets. And those payment networks are separate -- like how we recently saw the big banks sell Moneris, a payment network, off to US private equity. Or how Interac isn't a 'bank'. Even something like an ATM is a partnership between banks and payment networks -- you can see the payment networks ATMs are a part of on the decals on the ATM, which generally need to match the decals on your card. Those are the payment networks the banks semi-outsourced / partnered with for facilitating ATM activities. The bank buys/owns the ATM (typically), and then has an agreement in place with those networks in regards to payments / transactions, and a defined data exchange between those networks and the banks systems for settlements.
Migrations to google wallet are generally cheaper than getting that sort of feature with one of the older style payment networks, you're right about that. Cheaper by a fairly large margin.
One point I was making though, is that there are likely more companies 'seeing' the details of your purchase than you may realize. And many of those companies have significant ties to the USA, and are reliant on USA products/services. Even "local community credit unions" tend to use one of two networks, one of which has all its support coming out of the USA. Our government / regulators have made no movement to detangle any of that, and are, in fact, pushing more and more of your financial industry into offshoring services to the USA. Our government/Carney are all "Elbows up!" in the media, but "Pants Down!" in practice.
Idk. Like 95% of the services Canadians use are supported/enabled by the USA. Services trade, for some reason, isn't discussed/included in most of the bluster around the trade deficit etc -- if it was included, things are massively lopsided in favour of the USA.
And if the USA pulls those services, it'd likely be chaos -- Canada would capitulate. Like ask Canadians/Canadian businesses if they're prepared to give up their cell phones, email, windows, streaming media like Netflix, Apple, etc etc. From what I've seen, they'd rather capitulate, than have any decrease in their standard of living.
Even something like the drop in travel. While there are some people I know who are avoiding travel on principle, for a larger number of people it's more just a matter of it costs a lot -- but they have no particular reservations about going to disney or whatever. Even know some who vacationed in floriida recently, drove past mara lago and all that crap.
Tariffs didn't work in the past, but Canada wasn't so much of a bitch in the past. Now, most Canadians are absolutely reliant on the USA, and products/services from the USA, to the point that they likely can't function without that foreign country. Alberta is more inclined to buddy up with Trump/America, in large part because most of Alberta's economic activity is totally reliant on the USA, not on other Canadians. Pretending like we're going to be resilient now, just because in the past we were more independent/able to withstand this sort of pressure, is a bit naive to me.
Doesn't really look all that official, and the source is generally unknown.
That said, in terms of the trade war, I'm surprised Canada hasn't demanded that we include the service-deficit/trade in the calculations. The trade deficits the Americans like to quote, don't include things like, say, how much Canada spends on Microsoft, Netflix, Apple, etc.
I think to understand my position a bit more, it's worth considering how the US has approached international politics recently.
They knew they were going to bomb the shit out of Iran and cause massive oil price shocks. So a few months prior, they abducted the president of Venezuela, and declared Venezuela's oil their own via military force -- and an ongoing campaign of war crimes against fishermen in the region. They no longer see the point in 'trading', or the veneer of polite international politics, and are content to use military force to acquire assets for businesses. They have even threatened military force in the taking of Greenland, a region that's part of a NATO partners traditional territory.
Seeing as they are prepared to use their massively lopsided military force in conflicts explicitly in the interests of American businesses, such as AI companies, I don't think 'money' is the only metric at play in whether these companies stay around. Musk was literally pillaging America's data systems under the guise of Doge, and the tech-fascists are very much integrated into the republican administration.
And yeah, these are the same people who partied with Epstein. They likely view the worst thing about the Epstein files situation, as being the audacity of the poors to think they have the right to hold their betters to any sort of accountability based on poor people morality. One reason they likely want their own regulation / law independent "freedom" cities, is so that they can have Epstein parties out in the open with zero risk, aside from STDs. So far, America's shielded most of their rich pedophiles from any real fallout, but why should they even have to bother with such a nuissance, when they're busy "earning" their billions by having bitchy low brow word fights on X.
The US doesn't care, and the rest of the world is unable to hold them accountable, which is also why the US doesn't care.
Trump literally joked about committing war crimes in Venezuela in his first state of the union speech this time around. A room full of American politicians laughed alongside him. A few democrats wrote an angry letter.
Bit weird to call it a fight, when our govt is actively encouraging it.
Gotta build them data centers though! For the American tech fascists to use!
So, I seem to recall that early in the trade dispute, the Ford government in Ontario ripped up a Starlink deal they'd been working on, making a big show about not giving them more leverage. The next week, Rogers inked a deal with Starlink to provide satellite peering/connections to their customers, and then the Ontario government could get that service through a "Canadian" telco.
Point being, I don't believe a word our government says when it comes to their intentions with regards to detangling from US tech oligarchs, especially when they're leaning on companies like Bell, Rogers and Telus, which are massively dependent on US tech oligarchs. They'll "build up" a "sovereign" internet setup, by outsourcing the work to either American companies directly, or to Canadian companies acting as proxies for American companies to spare some optics. Sorta like how "Telus" doen't actually have Canadian sovereign email, they just resell google or microsoft. Hell, Telus's VoIP product, "Business Connect", is just a rebrand of Ring Central. They literally point users to the Ring Central manuals, because our big rich hugely profitable mighty telco, can't even write/maintain their own branded documentation. Even routes through RC servers down south for most calls.
It's also likely worth highlighting that some of those big telcos, like Telus, have like $19.5 billion in long term debt, with a market cap of like $20 billion. There's talk of big overhauls being required for Telus, as it's become too outsourced/unfocused, and its debt's out of control. But hey, Carney just announced a government bailout! Yay, liberal hand outs to big business! Canada foots the bill for the infrastructure, the Telcos get the profits, and it sounds like they'll get to completely write off taxes for a while too.
As for people in this thread mentioning things like "Good the US shouldn't control the internet", I don't think they really grasp the state that Canada's internet is in. There are practically no east west data cables / redundancy around, we just use the US's backbone most of the time. Almost all of our software reaches south for updates / patches etc, as the US doesn't put any of those things into Canada, even on proxy boxes -- but also, it's way faster for a server in Vancouver to grab updates from Seattle, than it is to route data to the east coast. This is partly due to our country having crazy bad population distributions, with metropolitan areas like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal each having more people than entire provinces such as Manitoba and Sask -- it's nearly impossible to justify huge infrastructure spends in communities of like 500-1000 people. At best, this is likely to fill that infrastructure gap a bit -- but it won't change our dependency on US tech in a more practical way.
It's been like 2 years+ of this shit, and we still can't get something like a fairphone through the regular telcos -- like 99% of cell phones in Canada are Google or Apple, totally entrenched in those ecosystems. That's how much the telcos care about Data Sovereignty/Canada.
You're accusing me of being a racist / bigot, just because I say that topics such as the residential school system are not 'safe' work appropriate topics? Seriously? What fantasy world do you live in?
The CBC / public funding is partially dependent on US funding via equity programs. I'm not sure how the APTN is funded, but I'd be interested to know if they're self-sufficient, or if they rely on funding via public sources, which ultimately come from US sources as well. And as for whether they'd make it or not, what happened to other similar shows when Netflix's funding disappeared? They've disappeared, because their survival is dependent on the US funding they receive.
So, objectively, you're wrong on the banking side. And unless you have some actual experience in that realm to offer up, I can't really argue with you as you're arguing on theoretical imagination as to how the systems work, and I'm basing my viewpoint in how it actually works through experience working in that industry. Don't be bitter that other people have had more experience in an industry than you, and can speak with more authority.
"You mean you don't". I'm the one who's looking at the bigger aggregate pictures, and highlighting things like Alberta's "general" support of Smith. Because I'm thinking outside my own perspective, and looking for broader societal data points to base my comments on. And because I can see most Canadians around me, doing/having done less to excise low-hanging US fruit type connections from their lives -- and when asked, they don't give a shit about trade stuff, they mostly just care to have their creature comforts / perks. Again, the basic fact that Canada is content to keep using / supporting all US services "on aggregate", indicates we don't give that much of a fuck about what's going on.; we don't care that the USA is "attacking us", if caring means we need to consider ditching Microsoft. Alberta doesn't care that their prem is a traitor, they still support her and trumpian style conservativism. Like she even spins it as "an approach that gets us better treatment from America!" .... backstabbing the rest of Canada! And Alberta generally shrugs.
You keep circling back and making these pissant character attacks against me, often using trite online-verbiage that hints at your own character. I think I'll finally follow through and be ignoring this from now on. If you'd like to make some final closing personal attacks, have at it.
Putting context/structure in to what I generally would consider mainstream is not moving the goalposts. It's providing clarity on my position, and the rationale that I use to underpin it -- sorta like what you were doing when you tried to frame 'mainstream' as "how many countries does it show in" in the prior post. I don't consider a show mainstream unless it's gotten enough 'buzz' to be discussed broadly in public -- the small-talk at the office test is a good measure of that, especially as only things that are office-appropriate (acceptable broadly by the public) are kosher topics in most offices. You can't exactly talk about risky stuff / niche interests without stepping on peoples feelings -- having something like an open discussion in an office of something like the Residential School system, is an HR minefield. Similarly, "porn" isn't mainstream to me, because it's not openly discussed -- even if it's shown in many countries, meeting your criteria.
Who pays matters. Would North of North be made without that cheque getting cut? If not, then its existence is dependent on USA funding/capital/investment. Cutting ties to the USA means giving up that funding. If there are businesses in Canada that are totally dependent on US money in other industries, and cutting the US ties will kill those businesses, I'd say they were effectively controlled by the US market too. That's.... sorta one of the big, primary problems with what's going on. So much of our stuff is dependent on US trade/money.
I didn't drag out some wikipedia on OSFI. I worked in the banking sector, or auditing that sector, for decades. I've literally spoken to regulators / had meetings with them. I've watched how things like mergers, subsidiaries and other connected companies are treated by regulators. But please, do tell me what your experience is in the industry, such that you know better?
Danielle Smiths antics are a symptom of the temperament of Albertans -- just like Donald Trump is a symptom of the temperament of general Americans. If you can get pissed off at America, or make generalisations about the state of current American culture based on their "loudest political clown", you can do the same with Alberta.
Did I say the country falls apart, or are you attempting to attribute words/concepts to me that are laughable, in an attempt to discredit my perfectly reasonable position? I said that Canadians don't have the same resolve, and that they'd rather maintain their current standard of living, likely to the point that they'd accept huge compromises on things like trade. Our government can't function without Windows/Microsoft and the other big tech companies -- or rather, the downgrade in functionality would be an intolerable trade off for the electorate, compared to caving on trade items -- so they'd vote in people to cave.
Know nothing about business -- ok, sure. Supply chain and source of funds matter. Netflix, a foreign company, funding a Canadian production is still arguably something that'd fall into the foreign-made content bucket. Specifically, it would fall into that bucket because we're loosely discussing cutting American influence on Canadian content/media -- you can't take their money to make shows, if you're cutting ties, so shows like North of North and other "Netflix" content would face more uncertain futures. It's a valid criticism. Sorta like, if you're trying to excise American influences from your day to day, you'd avoid McDonalds -- even though the staff working there are generally Canadians. Or if you saw a show funded by China, made by Canadian chinese people, supporting China's government values within a Canadian context, you likely wouldn't think it Canadian / free from undue foreign influence.
Shows 'showing' in multiple countries doesn't make them mainstream -- it's difficult to define what is mainstream these days, given how segmented the viewing markets are, and how captive audiences are to the 'one new show' that shows up on their streams that week. Viewership stats would count, especially if they broke down demographic splits, but those are very hard to come by -- they're also not very 'organic'. In the 'old days', shows that were / are mainstream are things that got discussed at the office -- Seinfeld, Friends in the 90s were frequently brought up. Shows that have themes, characters and plots that can cut across demographic segments and foster small talk banter in an office between the 50 year old accounting clerk and the 20 year old newbie. Some shows get brought up these days too -- but typically not shows like the ones you're listing. Likely partly because they are niche demographic areas that cannot be discussed openly without members outside that niche being accused of this or that.
In regards to banks selling payment networks -- you do understand that banks / financial institutions are regulated entities, with the Federal Government regulating banks, and the Provincial Government regulating Credit Unions. These organisations generally can't do shit without clearing it with regulators, without clearing it with the government. Things like their Deposit insurance require them to obey the governments demands -- the Credit Unions in BC have basically all been getting forced to merge by the government, for example. Like "Why didn't Canada have the same sub prime mortgage nightmare as the USA in 2008?" --> Because the banks werent allowed to do subprime mortgages, because the government told them what they could, and couldn't, do. I may know nothing about business according to you, but I do know how that industry generally works.
As for Alberta, YOU may think one way or another about their premier. But they're holding a fuckin referendum on sovereignty, at a ridiculous point in time. With their government having basically leaned on the scales the whole way to make it happen. And the province still, on aggregate, supports conservatives like PP, and support Danielle Smith's party over the competition. So, you know, broaden your scope a little, think outside your own little bloody box, and see what's going on with others in the province. They have a traitor leader, and they still support her. They still go along with her various bullshit initiatives.
And lastly, if you can't understand that a reduction in product options is a reduction in the general standard of living, I think this conversation is at its end. You're arguing against what's essentially a self-proving statement, Fewer choices/options is practically part of the definition of a lower standard of living. You're either failing to grasp basic concepts, or you're intentionally just trolling / trying to pick fights and be anal about stupid shit. Neither possibility is particularly interesting, nor enticing to prolong this further.
You're significantly over-estimating the significance of our exports to the USA, to the USA. Canada, as a country, is heavily reliant on trade One of the biggest problems "buy Canadian" movements have, is finding actual Canadian products -- even if we 'replace' the USA as a source, we're still heavily reliant on trade. It's tied to like 2/3s of every dollar earned in Canada, or something ridiculous along those lines. Like Alberta's busy cozying up to Trump, because more of Alberta's GDP is based on US Trade, than it is on the Canadian market. We only refine half of the oil we use domestically, we import the other half we use, while selling something like 2-3 times the amount we use domestically to foreign buyers like the USA and China: ie. we don't even have the refining capability to cover our domestic market, and instead we trade a huge surplus of crude oil, while buying our domestic mfg shortfall up on the market....so even one of our 'bigger' industries is unable to provide for the domestic market without foreign assistance / sources.
That's not the case in the states, where they're more self-sufficient overall, using products / services that they make themselves.
And really, that "services" part is the real major point that almost all of these 'trade' negotiations are missing. There's a trade deficit on goods, but if services are included, we send heaps of money to the USA annually, and our service industry is absolutely saturated with US companies, who've killed off any real Canadian competition. Not only does bringing in the services trade numbers push things into the US's favour, but it also highlights how boned Canada is in general, should we have a "hard cut" of relations with the USA. Our government would literally shut down if Microsoft were forced to pull the plug on the Canadian market.
Didn't refute anything? My first comment spoke directly to the diminished options for main stream shows / shows with broader public appeal. Shows like North of North and Heated Rivalry are great to see in the mix, but they're not really geared towards main stream interests -- they focus on plots and characters that are 'niche', and which generally have less appeal/interest to the broader public. North of North is also a Netflix series, so that's arguably American origin content -- it's one of those series that gets made, and aggressively marketed via algorithms, to meet government regulated content quotas. Even more, that there's a large chunk of content that gets clipped, my point still remains valid that the standard of living / quality of life is diminished by clipping American content -- by very definition, less choice/options, is a downgrade for Canadians. What I'd been pointing out with the 'type' of content delivered by the CBC, is that the cut in content when cutting American media, is largely mainstream / content popular with the majority of Canadians -- and your examples of niche content for specific demographics, available on the cbc, isn't enough to make up that shortfall.
My second note was broad stroke refutation of everything you're trying to highlight, by simply pointing out that while you may be pontificating about this and that online, the cold hard truth is that Canadians aren't moving in great numbers to clip things like American media/American streaming services, etc. You can armchair jockey all you want, but the boots on the ground (payment cards in the hands?) say that us Canadians don't really care enough about Trump's tariffs/trade shenanigans, nor about his administration's policies, to reduce our options for streaming on apple or netflix or whatever, nor are people boycotting Amazon. Our creature comforts and convenience come first in our priority lists. Piss and moan about other options being around all you want, they're not convenient enough, or high enough quality, for general Canadians to switch.
We'd rather sell the Americans our payment networks / critical infrastructure, and then the next week make a big blustery media storm about trade deals falling through because of sovereignty. We collectively shrug and make excuses for people like Danielle Smith, who runs to the USA to discuss trade rather than siding with her Canadian counterparts - Albertans, who are Canadians, still support her it seems. We are nowhere near as resilient / self-reliant as people seem to pretend at times, and there's still no real indication that the public has moved aggressively away from American service providers, nor any indication that they would.
I'll just respond with two things, then I'll likely be ignoring this thread --
First, I have 'tried' to watch CBC Gem and other similar broadcasting, so I'm familiar with at least some of the shows you mentioned. But most were pretty niche market and not that entertaining -- Canada's public broadcaster funding and priority towards equity concerns means that most of the publicly funded programs in Canada speak directly to niche demographic segments, and are not intended for broad general appeal. Something like Heated Rivalry is a story worth telling, one that would obviously be lauded by a 'progressive' leaning film industry, but don't expect "most" straight guys to gush / get excited about a gay romance series. Shows with Indigenous themes are similar, though they also have overt negative depictions of non-first nations, with very stereotyped/racist characters -- again, content that's fine to produce for a niche market, but don't expect it to be something the people gettin slagged are all giddy to spend an evening watching.
Second, my point regarding Canadians resolve is proven by how many of us choose to continue to use things like Windows, Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Google, Tesla, etc. These companies are directly involved with the Trump administration, Musk even ran a government department dedicated to pilfering government data for the right-wing agenda. He did Nazi salutes on the world stage. Canadians keep buying and driving around in Teslas. They keep using US products and services. Carney hires Americans for cabinet assistants. We sell Moneris, a huge Canadian payment network to US Private Equity, and we all shrug. Our government runs on Microsoft cloud products, with data exposed to Microsoft/US Government agencies, and we accept our lack of privacy in exchange for convenience. That's really all the evidence / rebuttal I need to demonstrate my point.
American and Canadian culture is a lot more similar, than Canadian and most other cultures -- denying that is pretty silly, even with the current issues ongoing.
The amount, and quality, of the content from other sources is lower than from the USA. I think I mentioned in the earlier post that it's a matter of accepting a diminished quality of life / standard of living -- a reduction in the quality / variety is just that, even if there are 'some' replacement options around.
Subtitled shows aren't the same as hearing your native language spoken in media. It's one reason immigrant parents are often very eager to get media from their home country / in their home language, as it's better to expose their kids to the language/culture of their homeland if they want to maintain some ties.
Endorsing/embracing wide-spread piracy of IP would likely be very bad for Canada on the whole. Piracy to me is 'fine' in moderation and based on subjective individual situations, but if applied broadly to the entire population as a standard, it'd be a negative.
Ideally, Canada would make more content for Canada. But I don't think we realistically have the market size for that.
Ah, then your card payments may also be generally 'good' for all I know, I'm not too familiar with how outsourced many European countries are in this regard.
It's not a matter of whether Canadians would be 'fine', it's a matter of whether they'd be prepared to lower their standard of living by using other services, particularly ones from other countries, often ones that don't speak english, nor understand Canada's culture.
Like Canada's semi unique as a country in that almost all of our goods and services are made outside the country. We effectively export raw materials to the USA, and use the profit from that to buy manufactured goods and services from the USA and elsewhere. Even amidst all this trade chaos, we're still mostly looking at how to do things offshore / not do it ourselves -- that sort of shows us the general temperament of 'contemporary' Canadians, I think.
Those still touch payment networks. Debit cards are basically cards from Payment networks that are partnered with Banks/Credit Unions. PSP/DC Payments is an example of a payment network, Everlink, Interac, Exchange, Cirrus, etc. Seeing as Carney/Canada are ok selling off those payment networks to US Private Equity, you're going to always be somewhat dependent at this point on US services. Like I'd bet you that most of Interac, even though it's "Canadian", is running in US Cloud platforms like Azure and AWS, meaning it's 'realistically' fair game for US AI harvesting etc. Canadian businesses that try to pretend they're 'good' on this front will almost always cite privacy legislation compliance, to things like "Data residency" -- pretending as though just because a copy of the data is stored in Canada, that it isn't exposed/leveraged/dependent on US/foreign services.
It isn't until the very end of the article that they even bother to discuss the obvious approach to the fee on transactions -- a flat rate fee. Like I know some of the flat rate fees in Canada are around $0.04 per transaction -- no matter the dollar value of the transaction. Which is a huge profit margin, really, for banks -- cause they'll charge people like $3 if you're not their customer at an ATM, even though your withdrawal only costs them $0.04-$0.10 in network fees.
Depending on the financial institution, that sort of app function would be outsourced to a third party anyhow. Payment networks are semi-separate from banks/financial institutions, and they're generally involved in digital wallets. And those payment networks are separate -- like how we recently saw the big banks sell Moneris, a payment network, off to US private equity. Or how Interac isn't a 'bank'. Even something like an ATM is a partnership between banks and payment networks -- you can see the payment networks ATMs are a part of on the decals on the ATM, which generally need to match the decals on your card. Those are the payment networks the banks semi-outsourced / partnered with for facilitating ATM activities. The bank buys/owns the ATM (typically), and then has an agreement in place with those networks in regards to payments / transactions, and a defined data exchange between those networks and the banks systems for settlements.
Migrations to google wallet are generally cheaper than getting that sort of feature with one of the older style payment networks, you're right about that. Cheaper by a fairly large margin.
One point I was making though, is that there are likely more companies 'seeing' the details of your purchase than you may realize. And many of those companies have significant ties to the USA, and are reliant on USA products/services. Even "local community credit unions" tend to use one of two networks, one of which has all its support coming out of the USA. Our government / regulators have made no movement to detangle any of that, and are, in fact, pushing more and more of your financial industry into offshoring services to the USA. Our government/Carney are all "Elbows up!" in the media, but "Pants Down!" in practice.
Idk. Like 95% of the services Canadians use are supported/enabled by the USA. Services trade, for some reason, isn't discussed/included in most of the bluster around the trade deficit etc -- if it was included, things are massively lopsided in favour of the USA.
And if the USA pulls those services, it'd likely be chaos -- Canada would capitulate. Like ask Canadians/Canadian businesses if they're prepared to give up their cell phones, email, windows, streaming media like Netflix, Apple, etc etc. From what I've seen, they'd rather capitulate, than have any decrease in their standard of living.
Even something like the drop in travel. While there are some people I know who are avoiding travel on principle, for a larger number of people it's more just a matter of it costs a lot -- but they have no particular reservations about going to disney or whatever. Even know some who vacationed in floriida recently, drove past mara lago and all that crap.
Tariffs didn't work in the past, but Canada wasn't so much of a bitch in the past. Now, most Canadians are absolutely reliant on the USA, and products/services from the USA, to the point that they likely can't function without that foreign country. Alberta is more inclined to buddy up with Trump/America, in large part because most of Alberta's economic activity is totally reliant on the USA, not on other Canadians. Pretending like we're going to be resilient now, just because in the past we were more independent/able to withstand this sort of pressure, is a bit naive to me.
IF the USA allows those weapons to be used against Russia.
Doesn't really look all that official, and the source is generally unknown.
That said, in terms of the trade war, I'm surprised Canada hasn't demanded that we include the service-deficit/trade in the calculations. The trade deficits the Americans like to quote, don't include things like, say, how much Canada spends on Microsoft, Netflix, Apple, etc.
I think to understand my position a bit more, it's worth considering how the US has approached international politics recently.
They knew they were going to bomb the shit out of Iran and cause massive oil price shocks. So a few months prior, they abducted the president of Venezuela, and declared Venezuela's oil their own via military force -- and an ongoing campaign of war crimes against fishermen in the region. They no longer see the point in 'trading', or the veneer of polite international politics, and are content to use military force to acquire assets for businesses. They have even threatened military force in the taking of Greenland, a region that's part of a NATO partners traditional territory.
Seeing as they are prepared to use their massively lopsided military force in conflicts explicitly in the interests of American businesses, such as AI companies, I don't think 'money' is the only metric at play in whether these companies stay around. Musk was literally pillaging America's data systems under the guise of Doge, and the tech-fascists are very much integrated into the republican administration.
And yeah, these are the same people who partied with Epstein. They likely view the worst thing about the Epstein files situation, as being the audacity of the poors to think they have the right to hold their betters to any sort of accountability based on poor people morality. One reason they likely want their own regulation / law independent "freedom" cities, is so that they can have Epstein parties out in the open with zero risk, aside from STDs. So far, America's shielded most of their rich pedophiles from any real fallout, but why should they even have to bother with such a nuissance, when they're busy "earning" their billions by having bitchy low brow word fights on X.