The Liberal convention in Montreal was a Rorschach test of binary opposites. Judging from the proceedings, the party is galvanized by new leadership a year in with a patriotic, nationalist flare, ready to fight an ongoing war with Trump. It is a continuation of the Trudeau years, but with a machete at hand to chop away past mandates that no longer apply – regardless of who supported them, and when. It is cognitive dissonance at its best.

Nowhere is this dissonance more apparent than the proposal floated by former Google CFO Patrick Pichette: a $500,000 exit tax on educated Canadians.

For communities like Windsor and Niagara, this proposal is nutty. It is a direct attack on border communities that rely on cross-border workers. The exit tax would drop on border regions like Windsor or Niagara like Roadrunner dropping an anvil off a cliff onto Coyote. If a $500,000 tax were implemented, the estimated 5,000 local nurses who work in Detroit and earn U.S. dollars would likely just bite the bullet, start the process, and move to the U.S.; leaving permanently. Why even begin a conversation about an exit tax?

There is also a staggering irony here. Pichette benefited from the very mobility he is seeking to recoup from or eliminate. If he actually believes in this policy, he should be taxed with interest, and he should donate that money to the CRA to get the debate going.

The convention itself was a masterclass in serving a menu of cognitive dissonance to a restaurant of starved patrons. Mark Carney talking about 9/11 and Gander struck a perfect note for those looking for a feel-good dopamine hit. But the rest bordered on the absurd. Claims from Carney’s wife that she and her husband are stopped in the streets of global capitals by fawning citizens who claim that Canada is great? Or that Carney’s Davos speech is required university reading for Canadian students in 2026? It all played out like Sideshow Bob stepping on a rake repeatedly.

Carney claimed that “The Americans are going to get weaker” and that “If the United States no longer wants to lead, Canada will.” This is nonsense. Canada is not going to emerge as a global superpower, and it is not because we are not capable of thinking big or attaining greatness. It is because we are not willing to do what is required to achieve it. Mark Carney would make the perfect car salesman, selling a beater with over 200,000KM and in need of a new engine wrapped in the frame of a sports car. Or, in financial parlance, he’s a broker selling CDOs in 2008. He is selling a sovereignty brand through performative gestures and vibes because he cannot sell the economic reality right now.

For the party faithful, this underlying reality has to be demoralizing. They want to feel stronger, and virtue signaling achieves that in the moment. But the convention itself was built on what can only be described as a political lobotomy. When you watch Mark Carney perform a leveraged buyout of a political asset like now-former Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu – welcoming her in a blatant quid pro quo by her very description in her letter to constituents – the cognitive dissonance becomes deafening. Carney proved that his elusive majority was worth more than his base’s values. He is explicitly putting winning ahead of values, trading the party’s principles for another seat, edging the Liberals closer to an unelected majority, through trading pork barrel projects. How could you possibly be a Liberal at the convention, rubbing shoulders with the Toaster Oven Turncoat herself – remember she lamented that cannabis legalization would mean that children would smoke out of toaster ovens, or that legalization would mean vehicular traffic deaths would double (in a rhyming poem no less) – and keep a straight face? It’s a masterclass in shredding any integrity that you have.

Overall, the convention was a showcase of the easy. But the easy won’t move us forward or help us grow, and it certainly won’t prepare us for when times get worse. If we want the vibe of a sovereign superpower, we need to build the infrasture of one.

That means treating the 401 corridor not just as a commuter route, but as an integrated industrial and defense arsenal. If the ongoing geopolitical conflicts in Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Gaza, Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, etc, have taught us anything as of late, it’s that the future of warfare is both traditional artillery combined with advanced drones. 

We should be partnering with Ukraine and investing heavily in R&D (ripping off and duplicating) of their drone tech, and building the future of hard power in our own backyard. It means dropping the provincial walls that keep our economy small, and ending the absurdity of dumping domestic milk while the world gets hungrier. It means looking north to the Ring of Fire not as an inconvenience, but as the engine of our resource sector, and luring massive data plants to capitalize on our natural cold in the north. It means listening to the real gripes of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Quebec, and actually overcoming them, not mocking, chiding, ignoring, or lamenting.

Right now, the small, partisan Ottawa thinking is much like the musicians on the Titanic continuing to play while the ship sinks, or a more apt metaphor, focusing on setting the table while Mount Vesuvius erupts. There are more pressing matters at hand. 

If we actually want to challenge orthodoxy, we have to drop the performative optics, overcome the partisanship of the moment, and build a Canada that is too busy growing to ever worry about who is leaving and how to extract another $500,000.