Welcome back to This Week in Canada, where our prime minister is back at the White House, a politician does the unthinkable by admitting he was wrong, and the price of arranged marriages is the newest economic indicator that Canada is going in the wrong direction. Here comes the bride! (Spoiler alert: I said no to $50,000.)

Today is Mark Carney’s second lap through the White House since becoming Canada’s prime minister, this time sitting down with President Donald Trump to “focus on shared priorities in a new economic and security relationship between Canada and the U.S.,” as the prime minister’s office put it.

Whether it will be the start of something real remains to be seen. But those who know Carney say he is not going for a photo op. “Carney is not going to Washington to come back empty-handed. He is too smart for that,” said Fen Hampson, professor of international affairs at Carleton University and one of my mentors from graduate school. “Nobody expects Trump to remove tariffs completely, but Trump is clearly feeling the heat from U.S. manufacturers, especially in autos and aerospace, so he may be ready to make some sort of a deal to alleviate their pain.”

The big deadline looming is next year’s United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) trade review, but some insiders are “cautiously optimistic” that the White House meeting might at least loosen the logjam on steel and aluminum tariffs that are 50 percent on Canadian goods and 25 percent on those made in America.

Carney said last month that he and Trump regularly send text messages to each other, so maybe I was right about their bromance. Chemistry helps, but will it produce results? It’s hard to say given that Trump just made another “51st state” jab, and some Canadians seem seriously worried that the president might send warships into Arctic Canada as a show of force.

While the U.S.-Canada trade talks grind on, a Canadian mining company has quietly become central to America’s clean-energy ambitions. The Department of Energy is acquiring a 5 percent stake in Vancouver-based Lithium Americas and its giant Thacker Pass mine in Nevada. The deal is tied to a $2.26 billion government loan approved during the Biden administration.

Never before has a U.S. government entity bought directly into a Canadian company. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the stake is part of a broader effort to tackle the U.S.’s “crippling debt crisis” by cutting unconventional deals with global companies. Unconventional also is one way to describe the government’s new 10 percent stake in Intel and its “golden share” in U.S. Steel. (My Free Press colleague Tyler Cowen didn’t mince words in his analysis of the Intel deal in late August.)

Thacker Pass is no small play. The Nevada site holds the world’s largest measured lithium deposit and will become the top producer in the Western Hemisphere once it is operational. Thacker Pass’s first phase, a partnership with General Motors, is expected to go live in 2027 and produce 40,000 tons of battery-grade lithium carbonate a year—enough to power 800,000 electric vehicles. That would bring the U.S. a step closer to catching up with the global leaders in lithium: China and Chile.

Another Vancouver company, The Metals Company, is also feeding America’s energy ambitions. Through its U.S. arm, the company is vying to become the first firm licensed under U.S. law to commercially mine the international seabed. The area it is targeting is rich in polymetallic nodules containing nickel, cobalt, copper, manganese, and rare-earth elements.

CEO Gerard Barron told me last spring that the plan is to secure permits by year’s end and begin mining as early as 2026. When I touched base with his team recently, they told me that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) last month confirmed their “full compliance” and that their application has now entered the “certification” process.

Ottawa insists Canada is in control, but Washington writes the checks—and owns the future.

The trend is clear: Washington isn’t just relying on “friendly” supply chains. It is buying into supply chains directly. Ottawa is clinging to its same old rhetoric of sovereignty, while Canadian firms, strapped for capital at home, are heading south of the border where the money and scale are.

The contrast was obvious when Alberta premier Danielle Smith rolled out CAD$14 million for a proposed oil pipeline to northwestern British Columbia, backed by technical support from the companies Enbridge, South Bow, and Trans Mountain. But British Columbia premier David Eby dismissed it with a shrug. “[It] is not a real project,” Eby said.

Enbridge CEO Greg Ebel sounded exasperated. He reminded Canadians that the country has “absolutely” everything it needs to be an energy superpower—uranium, natural gas, oil, gold—but is throttled by its own red tape. “Capital will go to where the conditions are set,” Ebel said, “and today, the conditions are not set for that pipeline to exist.”

That’s the sovereignty paradox: Ottawa insists Canada is in control, but Washington writes the checks—and owns the future.

Canada Is the Backup Plan for the World’s Brightest

When President Trump slapped a $100,000 application fee on new H-1B visas, Canada spotted an opening.

Royal Bank of Canada CEO Dave McKay called it a “material opportunity” for the country to attract talent from India, South Asia, and Europe. The nonpartisan group Build Canada urged Ottawa to “move fast,” accentuating “world-class research institutions, similar time zones. . . and high quality of life” as selling points. British Columbia jobs minister Ravi Kahlon beckoned “tech talent, innovators, and scientists to come to BC.” And Prime Minister Mark Carney promised that the government would soon unveil a “clear offering” to welcome highly skilled talent shut out of America as a result of the new H-1B fee.

When the U.S. tightened H-1B visa caps back in 2004, companies didn’t stop hiring foreign talent—they moved jobs abroad. Firms that were most reliant on H-1Bs expanded overseas employment 27 percent faster than others, with India, China, and Canada among the main beneficiaries. Microsoft famously grew its Vancouver office to tap talent just across the Canadian border.

For every decline of one percentage point in the U.S. visa supply, growth at “affiliated foreign companies” jumped by 12 percent to 16 percent, researchers found. For every U.S. job that went unfilled, roughly 0.3 jobs were created outside the U.S.

I remember 2004 well. I was a broke international college student in Canada. The economy was growing at a 2.8 percent rate, as measured by gross domestic product, inflation was 1.9 percent, and the federal government was running its eighth consecutive annual budget surplus. Unemployment sat at 6.9 percent—worse than America’s 5.2 percent—but the loonie surged to USD$0.77, buoyed by oil and mineral exports. The U.S. economy was growing at a faster 4.4 percent, but it was weighed down by swelling deficits and the distractions of the Iraq War. America was still where the action was, but Canada was an appealing bet.

Without growth, capital, world-class institutions, and an immigration policy that truly attracts the best and brightest, entrepreneurs will either keep looking south—or treat Canada as little more than a waiting room until U.S. immigration policy opens the door again.

Fast-forward to today, and the only thing that hasn’t changed are the time zones. Canada looks more adrift than stable. GDP growth in 2024 was just 1.6 percent, barely half of the U.S.’s growth rate. Unemployment currently hovers at 7 percent, compared with 4.3 percent in the U.S., and Canada is racking up multibillion-dollar deficits. The loonie has slipped to USD$0.71 and last month suffered its largest weekly decline since February.

Despite the boasts about world-class research institutions, the reality is that Canada invests just 1.84 percent of its GDP in research and development. The average in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries is 2.7 percent, and the U.S. is at 3.45 percent. No Canadian universities are ranked in the world’s top ten. If you want true world-class research, try Singapore, Zurich, or the United States.

Nowhere is the gap clearer than in tech, the very sector that drives H-1B demand. A study by Toronto’s Leaders Fund tracked nearly 2,932 Canadian start-ups over a decade—and found that nearly half, or 48 percent, of companies founded by Canadians that raised more than CAD$1 million were headquartered in the U.S.

Tech workers south of the border earn 46 percent more—or about USD$40,000 extra a year. It doesn’t help that Canada’s own immigration policy has recently tightened, so the rhetoric about attracting top global talent rings hollow. Why would anyone move to Canada?

Even in India—the source of most H-1B workers—the tech sector is booming. India is now the world’s third-largest start-up ecosystem, trailing only the U.S. and the UK. In 2024, Canadian start-ups raised just USD$5.9 billion, compared with nearly USD$12 billion for Indian start-ups.

In January, I wrote about the H-1B visa controversy through Atal Agarwal, a 31-year-old entrepreneur in artificial intelligence who walked away from a job in San Francisco and returned to Delhi, worn down by the restrictions of his visa. Under U.S. immigration rules, he couldn’t start his own venture without risking his status. He chose freedom over uncertainty, and came home to build on his own terms.

When I spoke to him again, Agarwal told me he’s now is in Toronto on a work permit. His sister lives there. Being in Canada makes sense because his business is focused on North America.

Agarwal is the exception, not the rule. In 2023, Canada launched a visa experiment for H-1B holders. It sold out in 48 hours with 10,000 applications. But a year later, only 1,205—or just 12 percent—had actually moved to Canada. Red tape wasn’t the problem, according to the Niskanen Center, a think tank. Most of the H-1B holders saw Canada as a backup plan, despite perks such as open work permits, faster paths to permanent residency, and spousal work rights.

Canada can brand itself as open for talent. But without growth, capital, world-class institutions, and an immigration policy that truly attracts the best and brightest, entrepreneurs will either keep looking south—or treat Canada as little more than a waiting room until U.S. immigration policy opens the door again.

Is It Art, or Taxpayer-Subsidized Resistance?Banner art for a Nuit Blanche Toronto installation at City Hall by Portland, Oregon–based Diné artist Demian DinéYazhi’. (screen grab via YouTube)

Nuit Blanche is Toronto’s annual all-night art takeover: Streets, parks, and buildings transform into open-air galleries from dusk to dawn. This year’s edition had the theme “Translating the City,” and invited artists and audiences to explore how Toronto “speaks” through its landscapes, cultures, and countless voices.

One installation at City Hall was impossible to miss. It was a giant banner draped across the building by Portland, Oregon–based Diné artist Demian DinéYazhi’, which said: “English is a foreign language! Maintaining beauty requires resistance! Love revolution!” Ironically, the banner was written in English and paid for, of course, by the very taxpayers it resists.

Known for his bold, text-driven art, DinéYazhi’ has previously printed slogans like “Nurture resistance! Love revolution!” and “Western art history is colonial propaganda.” For regular readers here, those phrases will sound right at home in today’s Canada.

The last time I took in Nuit Blanche was 2013, a simpler time. That year, Ai Weiwei’s Forever Bicycles dominated Nathan Phillips Square, with 3,100 intertwined bicycles rising skyward, symbolizing freedom, mass production, and the rhythms of collective life. It was breathtaking, not didactic.

Speaking of resistance and revolution, a very different kind of artful expression surfaced online last week. Canadian postcolonial scholar Sabreena Ghaffar-Siddiqui of Rutgers University’s Center for Security, Race, and Rights reacted to the terrorist attack at a Manchester synagogue that killed two worshippers on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day, with this post on X: “If a pro-Israel Zionist synagogue in the UK was attacked because of the genocide in Palestine then we shouldn’t be surprised or horrified.”

She also wrote: “If they want us to really believe in [the] ‘Jewish supremacy’. . . then I’m sorry, but any hate towards said Jews would be valid. We should be expecting more of these kinds of incidences, tbh.”

On her website, Ghaffar-Siddiqui describes herself as an “award-winning public speaker” and “media commentator.” Her website features a photo of her meeting with Justin Trudeau while he was prime minister, and members of his cabinet. Until recently, she also led one of Canada’s largest diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives: the National EDI Knowledge Mobilization Centre at Colleges and Institutes Canada, hosted at the publicly funded Sheridan College. She has said that she was “forced to resign” from her advisory role and then “let go from my position as professor” at Sheridan because of her pro-Palestinian advocacy.

She ended her post on X with an implicit threat: “It’s really quite simple. If you want Jews to feel safe, stop allowing Zionist Jews to annihilate Palestinians in the name of their Jewishness.”

In true revolutionary fashion, Ghaffar-Siddiqui deleted the post and her entire account on X. She has now triumphantly returned, because every revolution needs a sequel.

Love for Sale! Canada’s Newest Economic Indicator

Tim Hortons fired the manager of a store in Ontario who allegedly offered a 17-year-old employee $15,000 to $20,000 to marry the manager’s 25-year-old brother so he could snag permanent residency in Canada. The employee’s uncle said that the pressure continued even after his niece pointed out she was underage.

The 17-year-old employee quit, and Tim Hortons said that the manager’s behavior was “completely unacceptable.” Sham marriages carry up to five years in prison, and anyone under 18 in Ontario needs parental or court consent to wed.

This brought back memories of my own brush with Canada’s underground marriage market. I was 22, an international student renting a room from a landlady whose friend—“Pablo the Filipino plumber,” or as I half-jokingly call him, the one that got away—was three decades older. He offered $50,000 if I married him so that I could remain in Canada permanently. I politely declined. I was desperate but not that desperate, and if I had that kind of money, I would have applied for permanent residency the old-fashioned way: by donating to a political campaign.

The Tim Hortons situation suggests that the price of love—and Canadian residency—has fallen. It also looks like even Canada’s black markets can’t escape national decline.

A Politician Actually Admitted That He Was Wrong“Premier David Eby did something rare in politics: He admitted that he was wrong about drug decriminalization,” writes Rupa Subramanya. (Mike Mastrandrea/ZUMA Press Wire via Alamy)

Some readers tell me that this newsletter paints too grim a picture of Canada. Where are the good news stories? Fair point—but there often is a silver lining if you look carefully. Take the last newsletter, for example, when I highlighted Chrystia Freeland’s quiet fade from Canadian politics.

This week’s bright spot comes from Canada’s wokest but undeniably beautiful province: British Columbia. Premier David Eby did something rare in politics: He admitted that he was wrong about drug decriminalization. Eby’s reversal comes more than two years after the province’s 2023 experiment decriminalizing drug possession. In 2024, I wrote about policies there that made it easier for doctors and nurses to prescribe highly addictive drugs, even to minors without parental consent.

Sure, the policy is still in place—and parts of downtown Vancouver could double as a scene from The Walking Dead. And this is a bit like spotting a fire only after you’ve doused it in gasoline. Still, Eby’s admission counts as progress in my book.