Need to Know: Canadian prosperity still runs through America

This isn’t to dismiss the value of pursuing new markets. Expanding Canadian exports to Asia or Europe is good policy. It broadens opportunities for Canadian firms, strengthens supply chains, and mitigates risks. But let’s be honest about scale. Canada’s total exports to Brazil, Italy, and Singapore combined in June 2025 were less than $300 million more than what we sold to Connecticut alone. The idea that we can meaningfully “substitute” U.S. trade with other countries is therefore not credible. The U.S. market’s proximity, size, and integration with our own economy make it irreplaceable. The task isn’t to replace American demand—it’s to complement it with new opportunities elsewhere while recognizing that the United States will remain our indispensable economic partner. Canadian trade diversification is a worthy aspiration. But the evidence shows that our prosperity still runs through Texas, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and dozens of other U.S. states. That’s the reality we must plan around regardless of the political noise in Washington. Vancouver’s busybody bureaucrats are off the deep end By Kirk LaPointe, The Hub’s B.C. correspondent The old joke goes: My parents taught me to swim by tossing me out of the back of the boat. The swimming wasn’t difficult; it was getting out of the potato sack. The academic literature tells us that nothing is better for a parent and a child than to have a parent-child experience of learning, whether it’s reading, getting on skates, riding a bike, hitting a ball, making a meal, or learning to swim. Good for both parties. I recently finished a nine-day boot camp-like stint with my two gorgeous grandchildren, and despite the bronchial infection I acquired that spread to an ear and eye by tossing and dunking girls in the water and being attacked one step short of elder abuse, I haven’t had this much fun since I did the same for their mother three decades ago. But there is a reason why we call B.C.’s largest city No Fun Couver. The sages of Vancouver have decided that parental instruction of swimming in the city’s pools is a stroke too far. No kidding: Parents are being told to cease and desist any time they try to instill swimming skills in their kids. It appears only “authorized aquatic staff” may formally do so. The reasons appear to involve the need to involve an approved instructor or a private operation with a business licence to ensure there is liability insurance to uphold the city’s park board requirements and the facility’s guidelines. Parents can “support and guide,” the city says, but not teach. It is, one concludes, a civic offence to demonstrate initiative. Of course, this rationale doesn’t hold water, but it’s far from the city’s only shallow policy in the deep end. The reality is that there is a shortage of public pools, lifeguards, and instruction time; lessons are costly and often overbooked in Canada’s most unaffordable community, Vancouver’s beaches have e.coli issues this summer, and parents are parents and children are children. Common sense would tell anyone the city would be wise to stay in its lane, swimming or otherwise. But no. When the Vancouver Sun explored this issue, it found a range of approaches as one drives around the Greater Vancouver area seeking refuge from the pool police, some strict and some slack. It appears that even the policies some bureaucrats devised on dry land are nose-thumbed pool-to-pool, but names are taken and offences cited. I can only imagine what children think when their parents are told to stop helping them not to drown. The rule that seems to best float is in Burnaby, the province’s third-largest city: “As long as parents are paying admission, following pool rules and not monopolizing pool space, there are no issues with parents teaching their kids how to swim.” Or Surrey, the province’s second-largest city: “Swimming success for children and youth is enhanced by regular visits to the pool and by support from a parent or guardian.” The largest city remains all wet.