THE DISPATCH

Note from Lee:

I’ve been heads-down the last few weeks reworking MiningandEnergy.ca to make it a lot more useful for the people who actually keep this sector running: you and your teams. The biggest change you’ll notice is that jobs are now front and centre, not hidden in a menu, not an afterthought, but treated as the main event.

There is a massive shift underway in Canada’s mining and energy landscape. Between critical minerals, LNG, and the rebuild of our industrial base, jobs in our sectors are about to lead the next chapter of the Canadian economy. That deserves a platform that treats hiring like the strategic priority it is, not a classified ad in the footer.

So here’s what I’m doing: for Dispatch readers, I’m running job postings at $50 for 40 days (regular price is $199). If you’ve got a role you’d like to test on the new site, a geologist, millwright, automation tech, VP projects, you name it, this is your chance to get it in front of a very targeted audience without needing a big HR budget.

The site reaches a large, sector-specific readership that lives and breathes mining and energy. Give it a go, see how it performs, and if you have ideas on how to make the jobs piece even more valuable, I’m all ears.

Part 6 of a 10 part series on the global reshaping.

The rise of the Medium Countries.

On January 29, U.S. President Donald Trump opened his phone, opened Truth Social, and pointed it straight at one of Canada’s most sophisticated export machines. In a few lines of rage‑typed text, he threatened to “decertify all aircraft made in Canada” and slap a 50 per cent tariff on any Canadian plane sold into the U.S. until Ottawa certifies a suite of rival Gulfstream business jets.

This isn’t just another tariff threat. It’s a line‑crossing moment where safety certification, the technocratic plumbing that keeps global aviation running, gets dragged into a trade war. And for a medium country that lives on high‑value exports like aircraft, it’s a harsh reminder: if you depend on a hegemon’s regulator to say your products are safe, the hegemon has leverage every time a tweetstorm rolls in.​

What Trump Actually Threatened

Let’s start with the substance. In his post, Trump accused Canada of “wrongfully, illegally, and steadfastly” refusing to certify Gulfstream’s new G500, G600, G700 and G800 business jets, framing it as a protectionist move that blocks U.S. planes from the Canadian market. As retaliation, he vowed to:

• “Decertify” Bombardier’s Global Express business jets, and

• “Decertify all aircraft made in Canada”,

• While imposing a 50 per cent tariff on Canadian aircraft sold into the United States.

He even hinted that if Canada moved ahead with a trade deal with China, he’d consider 100 per cent tariffs on all Canadian goods, turning aircraft into the spear‑tip of a much larger commercial threat.​

Within 24 hours, White House officials and regulators were scrambling to put guardrails around the damage. The Federal Aviation Administration quietly let it be known that Trump cannot unilaterally decertify aircraft already in service; at most, the administration could interfere with future certifications, new deliveries, or modifications. That’s still a serious problem, but it’s not “ground every Canadian plane overnight.”

Bombardier’s Exposure – And Everyone Else’s

If you’re looking for the main target, it’s Bombardier. The company’s large‑cabin Global Express and Global 7500 jets are exactly the kind of aircraft Trump sees when he looks at Gulfstream’s order book. Roughly two‑thirds of Bombardier’s revenue comes from U.S. customers, making the United States by far its largest and most strategically important market.

A 50 per cent tariff on new Canadian‑built business jets landing in the U.S. would:

• Blow up price competitiveness in Bombardier’s largest market.

• Freeze some buyers on the sidelines until the dispute clears.

• Complicate financing and residual‑value assumptions for lessors and banks.

And it doesn’t stop at Bombardier. Airbus builds the A220 in Mirabel, De Havilland Canada manufactures Dash 8s and Twin Otters, and multiple U.S. and European primes use Canadian workshare for components and completions. Any broad‑brush tariff on “aircraft made in Canada” hits that whole ecosystem.

The irony is that U.S. defence and intelligence programs also depend on Canadian‑built airframes. The U.S. Army operates Global 6000 derivatives as electronic‑warfare and surveillance platforms under programs like Ares and Hades; any serious move to decertify those airframes would collide with Washington’s own national‑security needs. That contradiction is part of why this threat is more dangerous as a precedent than as a policy that’s likely to stick.​

Turning Certification into a Weapon

Aviation certification has always sat in a different bucket from tariffs. It’s supposed to be about safety, not leverage. Canada and the U.S. have a Bilateral Aviation Safety Agreement (BASA) that lets Transport Canada streamline validation of FAA‑approved products and vice versa, built on the premise that regulators don’t play politics with airworthiness.​

By tying Gulfstream’s approvals to Bombardier’s access to the U.S. market, Trump is trying to merge two worlds:

• Safety validation, where engineers and test pilots assess whether a design can fly.

• Trade retaliation, where politicians and lawyers fight over market access.

If that merger succeeds, even once, every future certification dispute anywhere in the world inherits the same logic:

• Approve my jets or I’ll ground yours.

• Certify my drones or I’ll block your helicopters.

For a medium country like Canada, that’s a structural risk. The whole business model is: build complex, high‑trust products, aircraft, satellites, turbines, AI systems, and sell them everywhere. That requires predictable, apolitical regulators in your main export markets. When that predictability erodes, the cost of doing business goes up and the market shrinks.

The Medium‑Country Playbook When the Hegemon Loses the Plot

So what does medium‑country strategy look like when the hegemon starts using airworthiness certificates as a cudgel? A few moves stand out.

1. Double down on rules and alliances, not tweets
Canada can’t out‑tweet a U.S. president, but it can:

• Lean on the BASA framework and ICAO norms to argue that certification must remain technical, not political.

• Pull in Europe and other major regulators who also depend on reciprocal certification to keep global aviation functioning.

If you’re a medium country, your power isn’t in shock tactics; it’s in reminding everyone that the system only works if the rules outlast whoever’s angry this week.

2. Use your own leverage
Trump’s threat rests on the assumption that Canada needs U.S. buyers more than the U.S. needs Canadian production. That’s only partly true.

• U.S. military and intelligence platforms based on Canadian airframes give Ottawa a quiet bargaining chip.​

• Canada can also lean on other files, energy exports, critical‑mineral supply, joint defence programs, when it calibrates its response.

Medium‑country strategy is about linkage: if one channel is weaponized (aircraft), you remind your partner how many other channels they care about.

3. Hedge your markets, even in aerospace
Trump already hit Bombardier once with near‑300 per cent tariffs on the C Series; Airbus took over and turned it into the A220, protected under a European umbrella. That’s medium‑country hedging in action: share the platform, spread the political risk.

Aerospace is harder to diversify than potash or LNG, but the principle still applies. More aircraft programs with:

• Non‑U.S. partners in Europe and Asia.

• Non‑U.S. customers in the Gulf, India, and medium countries that value Canadian tech.

The more diversified your customer base, the less any one hegemon can threaten to “decertify” your future.

Why This Matters Beyond Planes

For Mining & Energy readers, an aerospace food fight might feel distant. It shouldn’t. The underlying question is the same one running through this entire series:

What happens when the systems you rely on, for trade, finance, regulation, certification, stop being neutral infrastructure and start being weapons?

• If aircraft certification is on the table today, could pipeline approvals, port access, or grid interconnections be there tomorrow?

• If one tweet can threaten to ground an entire industry, what does that say about the stability of long‑life investments in mines, LNG plants, or transmission lines that depend on cross‑border rules staying boring and predictable?

Medium countries don’t get to control the hegemons. But they do get to decide how vulnerable they want to be the next time a leader wakes up angry at a business jet. That’s the strategic thread that runs from Bombardier’s hangars in Montreal to nickel deposits in northern Ontario and LNG terminals on the West Coast.

The good news is that the rest of this series, Korea, Europe, the Gulf, India, is essentially the answer key. Every new bridge Canada builds with another medium power is one more way to make sure a single regulator, in a single capital, can’t flip a switch and turn off our future.

Next Edition: When the Lights Flicker – Power Grids, Blackouts, and the New Politics of Keeping the Energy Flowing

In the next chapter of this series, we’ll move from the skies to the wires and look at what happens when power grids become the next frontline of economic coercion and infrastructure failure. We’ll dig into rolling blackouts in major mining jurisdictions, the scramble for firm power in an era of electrification, and how medium countries are redesigning grid, storage, and generation strategies so that a single downed intertie or political spat doesn’t shut in billions of dollars of production.

// THE DIRT

A Closing Thought

NOTES FROM THE NORTH

I’ve been spending the last few days watching something unfold that feels almost unthinkable in 2026: a country running out of jet fuel. Cuba has told airlines it has no Jet A‑1 available at any of its nine international airports from February 10 to March 11, which means planes can land but they can’t refuel. Air Canada, WestJet, Air Transat and Sunwing have all suspended flights, and more than 400 weekly flights across carriers are facing cancellations or diversions.

On paper it’s an aviation story, NOTAMs, diversions, tech stops in Santo Domingo. In reality, it’s a reminder of how fast things break when energy security and geopolitics collide. Cuba has been leaning on Venezuelan oil; Trump’s move to cut off those supplies as part of his broader sanctions push has left the island without the fuel that literally keeps it connected to the world. Tourism evaporates, hard currency dries up, and suddenly a fuel supply chain that was invisible to most travelers becomes the most important piece on the board.

From where we sit in Canada, with our pipelines, refineries and export terminals, it’s tempting to treat this as a distant crisis in a tropical destination. I’m not so sure we should. If nothing else, Cuba’s month without jet fuel is a case study in what happens when critical infrastructure depends on a single political relationship, and what it looks like when that relationship turns off the tap.

-Lee

Nostalgia - The feeling you get when your youth says hello.