I’m here in Columbus, Ohio doing my annual gig with the Physcians’ Leadership Academy. Every year I get to run a half day complexity workshop for local physicians. It’s a fun gig and gets me a chance to see friends in this region and make a stop in Toronto on the way. Today was a weird day to cross the border though. For the past month, and especially the past weekend, the conversation that almost everybody in Canada is having is about the US tariffs that came into effect at 12:01 this morning. Blanket 25% tariffs on everything that crosses …
If you scour the pages of LinkedIn, it won’t take long before you begin running into folks from the corporate sector who are attempting to rationalize Elon Musk‘s current approach to organizational change within the US federal government. Many of them are drawing on their experiences, or their veneration of, startup culture, and I have seen posts lately, that I’m not going to bother to link to, which talk about the principle of “move fast and break things“ being worth a shot when it comes to government. Treat it like a startup. That way you get more innovation. It shouldn’t …
In the past few weeks, the President of the USA has issued explicit challenges to the sovereignty of Canada, both political and economic. In response to these challenges, some of my Canadian friends who lie on the more progressive and of the political spectrum have expressed a slightly disconcerting attachment to feelings of nationalism. I understand where they’re coming from. Over the past five days Canadians have been engaged in a nationwide conversation about what it means to be Canadian, what our country stands for, and in some cases, whether we shouldn’t just join with the United States anyway. Ironically, …
The light is returning to the northern hemisphere and we’ve had clear skies for the last 10 days. This is a photo of the twilight with Venus seen from my house looking southwest over Apodaca Ridge. Cloud has since rolled in and a little blast of coastal winter is coming. Republished. The post I sent out last week had broken links. My monthly round up of interesting links. These are posted nearly daily at my Mastodon feed. Democracy & Politics It has been a full month of politics here in Canada and in the US that has shaken a lot …
An image of water carving a channel in a gravel path that diverges and then joins up again. It has been frantic weekend here in Canada. The President of the United States implemented an executive order that imposed a 25% tariff on every single item exported from Canada to the United States, except 10% on energy. In retaliation, our federal and provincial governments have imposed some selected tariffs on American imports to Canada and in some cases we have closed markets for procurement for American services or for products like American produced alcohol. We are in a trade war that …