Euro Footy Fans Love America. Naturally, Carney Wants To Be More Euro

One of the joys of the current World Cup soccer event is seeing the unbridled joy of the Europeans who have decamped to North America to follow their teams. The Caledonian Crusade of kilted Scots in Boston. The Hup-Hup Orange flood of Dutch fans in Dallas. The massed Norwegians pulling en masse on the oars in Seattle.

Peak Euro summer has to be the German tourist meandering around North America to follow the Mannschaft while discovering the sheer joy of fast food. Bucc-ee gas stations. Endless interstate highways. Ordinary stuff that Euros can’t believe. Liker Waffle house. And Wal Mart. And drive-thru restaurants. 

“I know some people will say I’m too positive about everything I see, but this place was crazy,” the German tourist Frank posted while driving through the South. “They had a shooting range in the store.” A Swedish woman was charmed by free bread with her meal. And ranch sauce. “Why did no one tell me ranch sauce is like crack? EUROPE, WE NEED RANCH ASAP,”.

An English man visiting Orlando said on X, “Not gonna lie, Big Gulps from 7/11 are easily one of my favourite things I’ve discovered in America so far,”. Another added: “Every Scottish person in America needs to immediately try Chicken Fried Steak, and you’ll realize we and the Americans are kindred spirits.”

You get the message. Because their media only spins the leftist slants, Euros were expecting the America of race-crank, Joy Reid: “Nobody black I know is really excited about the 4th of July." It is the celebration of slaveholders who freed themselves from having to pay taxes to the Crown for their slave empire.”

Instead they got friendly restaurants, 100-stall gas stations and fabulous stadiums. Which they will take back to their home countries. @pstonge East Germans snuck to West Germany and were blown away by capitalism. Today it's the Europeans who are blown away by America.”

Until Canadians started drinking the bitter grapes of their media’s social networking they believed America was a hoot, too. Not perfect. Who is? But a generation of Guilbeaults and Jolys and Elizabeth Mays have had their effect. Now Canadians are told by completely impartial pollsters that Canadians should move their allegiance to Europe.

Where would they get such an idea? PM Mark Carney. Even as Euros are gushing over America the globalist errand boy is selling hard on Canada becoming more like those people who drive tiny cars, eat minuscule portions and have no air conditioning.  Oh, and invite millions of refugees into their home to create Sharia law.

Canada’s PM has said that the “new world order will be built from Europe” with his country playing a key role. He’s declared Canada “the most European” nation outside the continent. He’s in Europe every second week talking to guys named Lars and women named Inge about global digital IDs.

Carney’s European model of high taxes, heavy regulation, and expansive welfare states will come with trade-offs in growth, investment, and innovation. Not good ones. Over the past two decades, Europe has lagged the U.S. in productivity and technological leadership. To Carney this is all a meh! He whispers the magic word Trump and all is good.

Trump was not amused with Canada becoming the first non-European member of the SAFE mechanism, an initiative by the European Union on defence procurement. And an increasing affection for Chinese EVs and criminal billionaires buying real estate along the border. So he has twisted the CUSMA noose a little tighter, saying the deadline will pass for a renewal— with no treaty.

Of course if you were Mark Carney looking to avoid the sheen coming off your reputation you’d be looking to change the topic. The real estate can kicked down the road by Justin Trudeau’s low-interest mortgage miracle has arrived on Carney’s desk. Vancouver’s condo market has crashed and Toronto’s is not far behind. In a real world the developer who bought on the upside would now have to carry the downside losses.

But Carney’s solution is to have his housing minister bail out those developers by using tax dollars to purchase them and "convert" them into affordable housing. Did we mention that the housing minister Gregor Robertson was the Vancouver mayor who launched the developer hokey-pokey? Yeah. (This from the “I'm saying no bailouts," stance Carney took in this 2011 chat with George Stroumboulopoulos. "The objective [is] ending 'too big to fail’.") Right.

Convenient timing for a bailout of Vancouver condo development with zero disclosure. Developers behind the properties all have documented financial ties to China. Who must be protected for the full value of their investment— even as American house prices dropped 40-50 percent before the government stepped in to help.

Investor Mark Cohoes told journalist Sam Cooper @superscooper , “Here, the Canadian government won’t even let the prices clear”. The result, in his words, is “a moral hazard on steroids, which encourages these developers then to go and do this again, and do it again on probably a greater scale.

“Let the towers sell for what the market will bear — but let that ‘market’ consist of Canadian income earners and taxpayers, not foreign investors propped up by underground-banking flows.”

Meanwhile Toronto’s condo disaster is heading south, too with developers asking for HST handouts in the name of “affordable housing”. Prodded by Trudeau’s empty promises the Toronto and GTA condo market is experiencing its most severe downturn in over 30 years, with sales at 28-year lows, record inventory levels, and widespread project cancellations signalling a fundamental market reset. 

This collapse represents far more than a typical cyclical correction; it's the unwinding of nearly a decade of speculation-driven growth that peaked during the pandemic boom. Encouraged by the Liberal government in office the last dozen years. 

Soccer fans visiting Canada for the footy must be wondering how the residents could have screwed up a good thing so badly. But that’s what happens when you take your cues from Europe’s slow-motion culture collapse, not America’s Bucc-ee and all-you-can-eat approach.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2023 book Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, was voted a Top 20 greatest professional hockey books of all time by bookauthority.org . https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1770415300?linkCode=gs2&tag=uuid0a1-20 His previous book with his son Evan, Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/106980270