Prime Minister Confirms He Modelled The Risk Of An American Invasion, Which Is Either Prudent Or The Single Most Canadian Sentence Ever Uttered
Mark Carney told the New York Times he had studied the risk of U.S.-led military action against Canada, which is the sort of thing a central banker says when he has finally found a tail risk with a number attached.
The reassuring part is that he modelled it. The unnerving part is that he modelled it. Somewhere in Ottawa there is a slide deck with a probability in it, and that probability is not zero, and someone had to pick a colour for that cell.
Canadian defence planning has traditionally operated on one assumption, which is that the large armed neighbour is the reason we do not need a large armed anything. We built our entire national posture around a friendly border and a shared continental air defence, and the strategic reserve consists of two icebreakers, an apology, and the belief that they like us.
The government's response has been admirably calm. Ministers noted that studying a scenario is not the same as expecting it, which is true, and is also what you say about the fire extinguisher you just bought for the kitchen you have cooked in safely for one hundred and fifty years.
South of the border the reaction was a shrug, because the President had already moved on to explaining that Canada is destroying itself through immigration, a theory Canadian ministers called bogus while quietly noting it does save him the trouble.
The real finding of the risk assessment was buried on page forty. Canada's most likely defence against annexation remains the thing that has always worked. Nobody wants to administer this many time zones.