Editorials - Sept. 11, 2026
Born in the U.S.A.
The Canada-U.S. trade war has entered a new and uglier phase. As of Tuesday, Canada has imposed tariffs of 15, 25 and 50 per cent on $27.6 billion worth of American goods, matching U.S. tariffs dollar for dollar.
And for what? Tariffs are an economic blunt instrument. This dispute is unfair, unnecessary and needlessly painful. It is also increasingly clear that we are not dealing with a rational situation, or with trustworthy actors behaving according to the old rules of predictable trade and neighbourly self-interest. Canada should not surrender.
There are moments when a country must decide what it will tolerate, what it will defend and what kind of neighbour it intends to be. Canada has made its choice: stand up for its workers, its businesses, its sovereignty and rules-based trading. Now comes the hard part.
We must enter this phase of the dispute clear-eyed, not angry; determined, not reckless. We should protect Canadian industries, help those who bear the greatest burden and keep the door open for diplomacy. That will require patience, discipline and a willingness to distinguish between standing firm and digging in our heels.
This storm will pass. Trade will eventually find its way back toward reason. Until then, stiff upper lips. Steady hands. No panic.
Canada has been through hard times before. We will get through this, too, and we will be better for having stood firmly together. – SBS
My city of ruins
For older Canadians, they may have a cultural touch point of World War II, the assassinations of the 1960s or even Vietnam, while the younger generations will certainly point to the financial crisis or, more likely, the COVID-19 pandemic as the defining reality-shifting event of their lives. In the middle will be a generation of people whose lives have been shaped, in one way or another, by the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Today marks the 25th anniversary of that tragedy in New York City. From there, anger, sadness and grief would follow, as would years of dissection and an attempt to understand, as well as the bubbling up of a dark conspiracy theory sect that is now thriving in the wake of the aforementioned pandemic and the world of social media.
Today, 9/11 means a million things to a million people, but that day and in the days immediately following, we grieved as a people as we saw men and women jump to their deaths, burn alive and, eventually, never be found in the rubble. We pulled together and committed ourselves to a future in which this would never, ever happen again.
Endless examples of American/Canadian brotherhood, from police and firefighters at Ground Zero to the hospitality of Gander to soldiers serving shoulder to shoulder in Afghanistan now especially sting when viewed in today’s political context. However, in those early days, we were willing to go the extra mile - we’d wait longer, do more and submit ourselves to extra checks, pat-downs and x-rays - all knowing that, in the end, we’d all be safer as a result of them. – SL
Darkness on the edge of town
There may be no more appropriate Canadian to document America’s descent into unreality than Nathan Fielder.
The Canadian comedian left home for the United States and built a career out of making people uncomfortable. His comedy has always occupied the uneasy territory between reality and performance, where the joke is rarely where you expect it to be. Now, with You Can See Everything, his new documentary about disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, Fielder appears to have pushed that fascination to its logical extreme. The film, directed by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, was kept secret for three years before making a surprise debut at the Telluride Film Festival. The audience entered knowing almost nothing. They emerged, by most accounts, stunned.
That secrecy was fitting. Holmes is already a figure who seems to have wandered out of satire: a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who convinced investors that her company could revolutionize blood testing, only for the entire enterprise to collapse into one of the defining fraud scandals of the tech era. Fielder now places himself inside her world, turning a familiar story into something far stranger.
Canada has long produced entertainers who can look at American excess with affection, bewilderment and a raised eyebrow. Fielder’s work does not simply mock absurdity. It studies how people behave when absurdity becomes normal. And America is giving him an extraordinary amount of material. As politics, technology, celebrity and commerce increasingly collide in ways that seem designed by an intoxicated screenwriter, Fielder’s deliberately uncomfortable sensibility feels strangely timely. He understands that when reality becomes unbelievable, exaggeration may be the most honest form of observation.
Perhaps that is the great Canadian service Fielder is now providing America: not explaining the madness, but standing quietly inside it long enough for everyone to see how unhinged it really is. – SBS