Blayne Haggart
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bhaggart.bsky.social
Blayne Haggart
@bhaggart.bsky.social
1.6K followers 550 following 3.2K posts
Professor, Political Science, Brock University
Knowledge governance, IPE, Sydney Swans tragic

Co-author, with Natasha Tusikov, The New Knowledge: Information, Data and the Remaking of Global Power (Bloomsbury, 2023). Open Access.
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bhaggart.bsky.social
Nice to see a defence analysis that realistically grapples with the fundamental F-35 compromise: they would always remain under US control.
This must be the starting point of any F-35 evaluation.
(BTW, what they describe is a de facto kill switch.)

www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...
However, the F-35 may not be deployed without Washington’s tacit approval, which controls the aircraft’s software, sensitive data flows and maintenance systems. This dependence limits Canadian operational sovereignty in a European context. Thus, while the F-35 is perfectly suited to continental defence, it does not alone constitute a satisfactory response to Canada’s strategic autonomy requirements.
November 18, 2025 at 10:40 AM
bhaggart.bsky.social
See also: Robodebt (Australia).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robodeb...
The Robodebt scheme was an unlawful[1][2] method of automated debt assessment and recovery implemented in Australia under the Liberal-National Coalition governments of Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, and Scott Morrison, and employed by the Australian government agency Services Australia as part of its Centrelink payment compliance program.[3][4][5] Put in place in July 2016 and announced to the public in December of the same year,[6][7] the scheme aimed to replace the formerly manual system of calculating overpayments and issuing debt notices to welfare recipients with an automated data-matching system that compared Centrelink records with averaged income data from the Australian Taxation Office.[5][6]
November 10, 2025 at 7:43 PM
bhaggart.bsky.social
"Technology AND artificial intelligence."
"increasing public service productivity": workers doing more with less.
AI: "improving how services are delivered to Canadians": More automated phone-tree hotlines? Yes, please!
(p. 205)
Greater efficiency will allow resources to be directed towards increasing public service productivity and improving how services are delivered to Canadians, particularly through the integration of technology and artificial intelligence (AI).
November 5, 2025 at 1:45 AM
bhaggart.bsky.social
"Understanding the broader effects of AI is also essential, helping to guide our efforts to maximise its benefits."

By which Carney seems to mean: Tell me how awesome AI is, bro.
Budget 2025 proposes to allocate $25 million over six years, starting in 2025- 26, and $4.5 million ongoing for Statistics Canada to implement the Artificial Intelligence and Technology Measurement Program (TechStat). TechStat will use data and insights to measure how AI is used by organisations, and understand its impact on Canadian society, the labour force, and the economy. This amount will be fully sourced from existing departmental resources. The government will also explore options for the National Research Council of
November 5, 2025 at 12:41 AM
bhaggart.bsky.social
Not sure what kind of plaudits Carney is expecting for bragging that asylum claims are down.

It's grotesque. Ghoulish. Trumpian.
The 2025-2027 Immigration Levels Plan is already delivering results: new temporary foreign worker arrivals have fallen by about 50 per cent this year, and new international student arrivals are roughly 60 per cent lower than in 2024. Asylum claims are also down by one-third so far in 2025.
November 5, 2025 at 12:19 AM
bhaggart.bsky.social
This story tragically illustrates the point I’ve been making for months: Mark Carney’s entire theory of the US threat is simply wrong. The threat is fundamentally political, not economic. Above all, it requires *greater* investment in government capacity, not the austerity that Carney has embraced.
However, Mr. Goodridge questions whether the CFIA will be able to move proactively to mitigate the effect of funding cuts in partner agencies if it is also facing resource challenges of its own. “It’s one thing to launch a task force to come up with and identify problems,” he said. “But you can’t do anything about it if you don’t have the infrastructure.”
November 4, 2025 at 10:05 AM
bhaggart.bsky.social
Herman addresses this argument directly in his oped.
At the end of the day, of course, trade agreements are government-to-government frameworks to set stable and predictable rules for cross-border business. Regrettably, Canadian companies have failed to fully utilize the business advantages of these market opening deals. A case in point is our business with South Korea where, in spite of a free-trade agreement, Canada continually runs large trade deficits, estimated at $13-billion in 2024. Relatively speaking, our trade deal has not resulted in Canada selling heavily into South Korea, but rather the other way around. Same with the Indo-Pacific region, where Canada ran a trade imbalance of $78-billion in 2023 with its trade agreement partners under the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Likewise with the European Union, where Canada had a 2024 trade deficit of some $33-billion in spite of the Canada-EU free trade deal. Why conclude these deals if business doesn’t follow through? We have to do better. But expanding into foreign markets can’t just fall on the shoulders of the private sector alone. It requires sustained engagement by the federal government. We need to consider how other countries do things. Take Germany, which has institutional structures for permanent business-government co-ordination on international trade through semi-public institutions such as the German Chambers of Commerce and Industry. The German model has paid off handsomely. Japan, another trading giant, likewise has a system of tight co-operation through powerful business federations with permanent structures. Canada, by contrast, only has loose, unstructured arrangements that are entirely ad hoc, reflecting domestic politics and the predilections of the trade or industry ministers at any given time. While Canada’s industry associations do a commendable job within this impermanent system, there is a total absence of anything like systematic co-ordination. This has to change. Even if adopting formalized structures might be a leap too far, Canada still needs a much more sophisticated, strategically focused system. The federal government has to work much more closely with the business community to end Canada’s overdependence on its unreliable – even hostile – neighbour to the south.
October 28, 2025 at 12:34 PM
bhaggart.bsky.social
Your regular reminder to read Peter Drahos, Survival Governance: Energy and Climate in the Chinese Century (Oxford University Press, 2021).
The pitch (1/3):
1. Draws on more than 250 interviews carried out in seventeen countries, including the world's four largest carbon emitters.
Abstract The climate and energy crisis requires a strong state to change the direction, speed, scale, and financing of innovation in world capitalism in order to create a bio-digital energy paradigm. Four states are possible contenders for catalyzing this survival governance: China, the European Union, India, and the United States. China is an improbable leader, but less improbable than the other three. No US president can close down the fossil fuel industry in time. The US state, worried about the slippage of its technological superiority, is turning to regulatory mechanisms like intellectual property to slow China’s technological development. China will have to manage the risk of a United States bent on military primacy. China is urbanizing innovation on a historically unprecedented scale. Lying at the heart of the bio-digital energy paradigm is a global city-based network of innovation. China, more than the other three states, is scaling technology innovation through the building of experimental cities such as eco-cities, hydrogen cities, forest cities, and sponge cities. The Belt and Road Initiative will take this innovation well outside of China’s borders. China could help to place cities into a new relationship with their surrounding ecosystems. Drawing on more than 250 interviews, carried out in 17 countries, including the world’s four largest carbon emitters, the book shows how cities and their networks represent the best chance for growing climate survival governance for the 21st century.
October 8, 2025 at 8:57 PM
bhaggart.bsky.social
Coyne’s characterization of R&R’s work is v misleading. They were found to have made basic errors in calculating this supposed debt threshold. There is ZERO reason to treat 90% as any kind of limit, hard or soft, as Coyne does. The “real” limit could be 200%, or none at all (correlation/causation).
How much is too much? Frustratingly, there are no firm rules we can turn to. There have been attempts to calculate “threshold” values of debt-to-GDP – for example, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff’s famous 90-per-cent estimate – beyond which a country is likely to run into trouble. But even if we attach much significance to that number, that obviously doesn’t mean a country can rocket all the way up to 90 per cent without undue risk. By that point you might have built up so much momentum as to be unable to stop from crashing through the barrier.
October 3, 2025 at 11:18 AM
bhaggart.bsky.social
Authoritarians abhor democracies. Given Canada's proximity and strategic importance to the US, there's no reason to think Trump's authoritarian designs will stop at the 49th parallel. USMCA renegotiation is a means to this end, as I argued back in February.
www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/86f19a2...
All this taken together shows CUSMA to be a weapon used by the United States to restrict Canadian economic and social policy, and to ensure we don’t even try, under penalty of economic pain, to either diversify or reinforce our own economy. It’s a cargo-cult agreement that ties us to the U.S. mast, offering only uncertainty and blackmail in return.
September 19, 2025 at 7:26 PM
bhaggart.bsky.social
From industry itself, on why CCS is a myth. (In Peter Drahos, Survival Governance, OUP, 2021, Open Access).

academic.oup.com/book/39687
We were fortunate in being able to gain access to highly placed individuals. When senior people from US manufacturing multinationals say things like, "Everyone realizes that CCS is not viable," one begins to read IEA scenarios, which assume carbon capture and storage (CCS), in a different way. The interviews in the United States with utility companies on the question of commercial-scale CCS were especially revealing. Experienced industry insiders suggested it made no sense as an option because of its cost. Claims that commercial CCS already existed or was in reach were being made by people who “do not run power stations.”
September 5, 2025 at 3:30 PM
bhaggart.bsky.social
We're at the halfway point! At #50, a song I've had in constant rotation since it came out last year. Not indie, not Canadian, not Australian. But it is, as the kids who used to be kids used to say, a banger. Drum roll, please...
(photos from the rafters, at her 2024 Toronto concert)
Opening to Charli XCX concert in Toronto, September 18, 2024. Green drapes enclusing a square platform out from the stage, with "brat" written on each of the four drapes. Which then will fall to reveal at the centre of the platform .... ...Charli XCX! And the crowd goes wild!
September 5, 2025 at 12:56 PM
bhaggart.bsky.social
No interviews with anyone who knows anything about LLMs. No indication the author understands that LLMs are designed to tell you what you want to hear, not necessarily what you need to hear.
If you substituted "tarot cards" for "ChatGPT" you'd end up with the exact same story, beat for beat.
Text from a headline and subheader in the Globe and Mail. Title: I asked ChatGPT to predict my retirement and it helped calm my financial anxiety Subheader: Some save every penny for a down payment on a home. Others live for today and figure tomorrow will sort itself out. I’ve spent years comparing myself to them
August 15, 2025 at 2:04 PM
bhaggart.bsky.social
Paul Krugman comes to a similar conclusion, FWIW. This isn’t going to end at the end of the month.
paulkrugman.substack.com/p/is-there-a...
The court ruling against Trump’s invocation of a nonexistent economic emergency may slow him up, but he’ll probably find a number of workarounds — for example, the steel tariff is legally justified by claims that steel imports in particular threaten national security, rather than a claim that we’re facing a general economic emergency. I still see no sign of a tariff end game. And the legal wrangles over what Trump can and can’t do will only add the the uncertainty and sense of chaos that is strangling business investment.
July 10, 2025 at 11:37 AM
bhaggart.bsky.social
Generative AI is creating a society of Packleds.
Two Packleds. Packleds are a scavenger species first introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generation. They are renowned for their technological illiteracy and monumental stupidity, reliant on others to make their tech “go.”
July 1, 2025 at 11:32 AM
bhaggart.bsky.social
I’ve always thought this was a perfect joke.
The Simpsons screen grab. Homer, Marge and some dude standing in front of a banner that reads: “Welcome Finalists Reading Digest ‘Brevity is … wit’”
June 9, 2025 at 4:56 PM
bhaggart.bsky.social
Canadian IR/IPE types! If you're in Toronto tomorrow (Wednesday) evening and you're wondering about the future of our discipline given the US turn toward fascism, please do join us at this event at TMU, 6-9 pm.
Will the ISA's recent charm offensive be on the table? You know it.
Poster for panel: UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTIONS: DOING IR/IPE IN THE SHADOW OF US AUTHORITARIANISM doing IR/IPE amidst the breakdown of global order? So do we! Bring yours for a free-flowing discussion. All are welcome! Panelists: Blayne Haggart, Randall Germain & Michael P.A. Murphy 04 June 2025 6-9pm @ 240 Jarvis Street Toronto Toronto Metropolitan University, International Living/Learning Centre (ILC) 102 Refreshments will be provided Includes photo of Merkel staring down Trump, while a bunch of other world leader dudes are staring back at her.
June 3, 2025 at 11:52 AM
bhaggart.bsky.social
Sigh.

What could go wrong?

From the Liberal Party's platform.
liberal.ca/wp-content/u...
Text from the Liberal Party of Canada's campaign platform: "As part of this review, the government will consider where AI can be leveraged to enhance productivity in government. We will look at every new dollar being spent through the lens of how AI and technology can improve service and reduce costs."
April 19, 2025 at 5:42 PM
bhaggart.bsky.social
Heartening to see @caut.bsky.social looking out for its members and advising against all non-essential travel to the US. That's how you do it.

All Canadians face exactly the same risks as academics. The federal government should issue a similar general advisory *immediately*.
Text: Given the rapidly evolving political landscape in the United States and reports of individuals encountering difficulties crossing the border, CAUT strongly recommends that academic staff travel to the U.S. only if essential and necessary. In addition, CAUT recommends that academics who fall into the following categories exercise particular caution: Citizens or residents of a country identified in media reports as likely to be subject to a travel ban Citizens or residents of a country where there are diplomatic tensions with the U.S. Travellers with passport stamps evidencing recent travel to countries that may be subject to a travel ban or where there are diplomatic tensions with the U.S. Those who have expressed negative opinions about the current U.S. administration or its policies Those whose research could be seen as being at odds with the position of the current U.S. administration Travellers who identify as transgender or whose travel documents indicate a sex other than their sex assigned at birth Academics should carefully consider what information they have, or need to have, on their electronic devices when crossing borders and take actions to protect sensitive information where necessary.
April 15, 2025 at 2:13 PM
bhaggart.bsky.social
German hockey is so much fun to watch.
Someone dressed up like a polar bear at the Eïsbaren-Adler hockey semi-final game 1.
April 1, 2025 at 11:48 PM
bhaggart.bsky.social
The endgame described here: The US will use tariffs to raise revenue and as a club to extort countries to continually negotiate market access in exchange for whatever the US decides it wants, which can change at any time. It’s a shakedown regime, a protection racket.
www.cbc.ca/news/politic...
March 16, 2025 at 11:16 AM
bhaggart.bsky.social
A The Far Side cartoon. Cat looks into an open dryer in a laundry room, having followed scrawled arrows with “CAT FUD” written clumsily above them on the open door, the floor and the open dryer door. A dog stands on his hind legs, hiding behind the washing machine next to the dryer, thinking, “Oh please, oh please…”.
March 11, 2025 at 12:19 PM
bhaggart.bsky.social
My (least-)favourite example in this genre was this paper by Canadian historian Jack Granatstein, calling for "A friendly agreement in advance" that would have had Canada sign onto the Iraq war and ballistic missile defence lest they crush our economy.
cdhowe.org/publication/...
Text reads: "Canada’s links with the United States are key to our survival as an independent and sovereign state. If the Americans are unhappy with us, as they were in the days immediately after September 11, they have the capacity to bring our economy to a crashing halt simply by imposing lengthy delays at the border. With close to 90 percent of Canadian trade heading south — compared with a mere 25 percent of US trade that comes to Canada — Washington’s capacity to inflict pain and enforce compliance on Canada is boundless. Canadian policy must be devoted to keeping the elephant fed and happy." Text reads: "Where there has been no change, however, is in defense. Wendy Dobson’s lead paper in this C.D. Howe Institute series suggests that “military expenditures seemcertain to be one price Canadians must pay for economic openness” with the United States. What military capabilities would Canadians be willing to pay for, she asks,“or would Canadians prefer to continue to ride free on US military capability?” (2002, 18). Dobson’s question is the correct one, but unfortunately the Chrétien government has already answered it in the December 2001 budget, and the prime minister has repeated that answer: yes, Canada will take the free ride, thank you very much. As someone once put it, Canadians pretend to defend Canada, and the United States pretends it does not!
March 2, 2025 at 3:27 PM
bhaggart.bsky.social
On the implications for Canada of a US shift toward a spheres of influence policy: Something I wrote in November 2016 (published 2018) at the very beginning of Trump I. Even then, a spheres of influence world was very plausible. And it's all bad news for Canada.
blaynehaggart.com/2018/06/09/m...
February 25, 2025 at 6:28 PM
bhaggart.bsky.social
"The sheer number of liberal (or, at least, not actively Trumpist) Americans who seem to view the occupation of Canada as either a Democratic poll booster akin to a Taylor Swift endorsement or a whimsical thought experiment is alarming."

Also this:
Text reads: When Americans like Baker coldly analyze the possibility of Canada joining the United States, they seem to imagine a Canada-U.S. relations fairy waving their magic wand, taped like a hockey stick, and transforming the country into the 51st state. When Canadians discuss this, they picture exactly two scenarios. In the first one, Canada is so economically debilitated by a deliberate U.S. policy of impoverishment that it ceases to function as a nation and has no choice but to be quietly absorbed. In the second scenario, tanks roll across the border and bombs fall from the sky until Canadians are forced into a union at the world’s largest gunpoint—just one more star on a frankly already too busy flag.
February 25, 2025 at 5:42 PM