Donald Trump's former ambassador to the European Union says nothing should be off the table when it comes to Canada-U.S. trade discussions and that the U.S. president wants immediate change on his irritants like dairy and auto manufacturing.

"You cannot have fair and multilateral trade by someone saying that something is not up for grabs," Gordon Sondland said in an interview on Rosemary Barton Live on Sunday. "Everything is up for grabs. Everything."

Sondland referred to Canada's supply management system — a national policy framework meant to ensure predictable and stable prices by guaranteeing supply-managed dairy farmers a minimum price for their products. Trump has railed against the system for years.

FPTP Defenders Have Run Out of Excuses: How Arguments Against Proportional Representation Reveal a Fundamental Disregard for Democracy

After extensive debates with FPTP defenders, I've noticed a pattern: they consistently value "efficiency" over democratic representation, treating democracy as a secondary consideration rather than the primary purpose of elections.

1. "PR gives extremists power"

This fundamentally misunderstands how extremism works in electoral systems. FPTP doesn't prevent extremism – it masks it until extremists capture an entire mainstream party from within. Look at the US, where MAGA extremism has taken over the Republican Party. Even in Canada, when the extreme Reform Party merged with the Progressive Conservatives, the Reform Party Leader (Stephen Harper) became the leader overall. Three of the four conservative permanent leaders were once Reform Party members. In PR systems, extremist views get proportional representation (no more, no less) while coalition dynamics contain their influence. The transparency PR provides is a feature, not a bug.

2. "PR creates ineffective coalition governments"

International evidence contradicts this. Countries with PR consistently outperform FPTP countries on economic stability, social welfare, and environmental protection. The Nordic countries, Germany, and New Zealand all demonstrate effective governance under PR. What FPTP defenders call "efficiency" is actually minority rule – the ability of a party with 35-40% support to implement policies opposed by the majority.

3. "FPTP provides clearer accountability"

This claim collapses under scrutiny. In Ontario, PCs govern with a "majority" despite 57% of voters explicitly rejecting them. How is this accountability? The Liberals campaigned on housing affordability in 2015 and failed to make progress for nine years while the crisis exploded. FPTP allowed them to remain in power despite this failure. That's not accountability – it's systematic failure.

4. "PR would hurt Canada due to our polarized landscape"

This argument reveals a profound misunderstanding of electoral systems. Their purpose is to provide accurate representation, not to manipulate outcomes based on which ideologies you personally prefer. If you're concerned about extremism, address the cultural factors creating it rather than masking it through electoral manipulation that also disenfranchises millions of moderate voters.

The mathematical reality remains undeniable: FPTP systematically discards millions of valid votes in every election. In rural ridings like Hastings-Lennox and Addington, over 51% of voters had NO representation whatsoever in the last election.

The heart of the issue is simple: In a democracy, citizens are deserving of and entitled to representation in government. Electoral systems should ensure that vote percentages match seat percentages – the core principle of democratic representation. Anything less undermines the very foundation of representative democracy.

FPTP defenders have run out of excuses. The evidence is clear: proportional representation delivers more democratic outcomes, more stable policy, and better governance. It's time Canada joined the many successful democracies that ensure every vote counts.

Crossposts might be annoying, because

• essentially they are the "repost" feature of lemmy. And repeats might be low quality spam, because you have to look at the source, how often it was reposted already, etc.
• crossposts might seem like a cry for unwarranted attention, but they might be necessary in a fractured federated system like Lemmy …

Or do you not care when realizing "this is a crosspost"?

Video description

In the most disturbing geopolitical shift of my lifetime, the new US government is siding with dictators and lashing out at allies, waging economic war on Canada with the repeated stated goal of ending our sovereignty. While many Americans are also horrified, realistically their focus right now is internal. We need to stand up, strengthen our country, and reorient to friendlier nations. In this video I talk to three experts to learn how we can strengthen our economy by building more, especially critical needs of housing and transportation.

In the past few weeks the [email protected] community has grown quite a bit. The growth has mostly consisted of news and (geo)political posts, which is understandable.

However, this makes it hard to follow any text threads like these or non-news/political posts. This leaves the only option of either blocking the [email protected] community completely, or having to use a mobile app with keyword filtering (I'm not aware of any on desktop, and keyword filters do not sync between devices yet).

I'd suggest changing/updating the rules of [email protected] to note to users to post their political (and geopolitical?) news threads in [email protected] instead. Alternatively, split geopolitical with (world) news into a separate lemmy.ca (world)news community like with [email protected]? This split community would have a rule that all posts would need to link to a news site or equivalent. Text & image posts would remain at [email protected].

This would make it a lot easier to find text posts, general discussion threads, and image posts without them being drowned out by the news and (geo)political news threads.

One can look to [email protected] and note how that community makes it clear in the rules that politics, (world) news, and geopolitics have to be posted into the Australian politics/(world) news communities. This makes the main Australia community much easier to browse and scroll through without going insane.

For more than a decade, the conflict in Syria appeared too intense, too complex, and too intertwined in geopolitics to be resolved, with the international community choosing to prioritize managing and containing the symptoms rather than seeking to resolve their root causes. However, that all changed in late 2024, when armed opposition groups toppled the Assad regime in 10 days. Today, the country remains extraordinarily fragile and marked by the debilitating effects of a lengthy civil war. Despite a widespread national consensus on the need to reunify Syria, malign and destabilizing actors remain active, including ISIS, Iran, and pro-Assad loyalist insurgents. Nevertheless, there is now a historic opportunity to reshape Syria for the first time in more than half a century. And engagement by the international community will be critical to the country’s success.

It was great fun

With the help of the store's produce manager, Innis decided to wean Urban Grocer off U.S. produce. By Monday (March 17), all of the store's American produce will be replaced with alternatives from Canada and places farther afield, like Morocco, Argentina, Mexico, Japan and Europe.

“I'm very proud of that team for what they've accomplished in such a short order,” said Innis. “As a result of that, we're getting really good feedback from our customers.”

To avoid raising prices, Urban Grocer has absorbed the extra cost incurred as a result of ordering produce from countries farther away than the U.S. It is now seeing less profit per item sold, but the general manager explained the store is making more money, as it has seen an uptick in customers since steering clear of U.S. produce.

Screenshot linked from https://hci.social/@tod/114163018363881908

Just felt sharing.

"I recently learned my finishing mentor – likely he was yours, too – and friend Bob Flexner died at home on December 29, 2024 (read his obituary here). Bob was perhaps best-known for the book “Understanding Wood Finishing,” recognized by many as the bible of all things finishing, and as the long-time finishing columnist for Popular Woodworking Magazine."

Michael Schwinghamer has a passion for shipwrecks and is on a mission to capture them in their watery graves — leaning on his background in surveying and diving. His 3D renderings of ships lying on the sea floor could be the last glimpse before they’re gone forever.