Is Canada actually sovereign?

I was reconnecting with someone from the early Sheertex days recently. They planted an idea I’ve been unable to shake:

• Cashflow negative
• Doesn’t produce enough food to feed itself fresh year-round
• Doesn’t refine its own raw materials
• Struggles to defend its borders
• Projects no power
• Low institutional trust

Things happen fast. If you closed a couple of bridges in December - it would be really ugly.

I live in Canada. But not because I love Canada. To paraphrase Rick & Morty:

I’ll keep on saving the Earth. but not because it contains Canada... Because moving is a bitch and a half.

I can’t shake it. Its gonna suck to move… But I don’t want to live in a country that isn’t sovereign. I don’t want to be a subject of another human. Why is everyone else ok with this? Why are we furiously building roads and highways and housing and power plants for a country that can’t act independently? Why AREN’T we furiously building the things that would make us independent?!?!

58km x 58km of greenhouses in Leamington plus a reactor* - doable inside a decade - would dodge any short term problems. Refineries solve the rest. Neither balances the books on its own - they go the other way. But these are what debt is for - swapping rent for ownership and self-sufficiency.

*** My Math:

HUMANS: 41m

CALORIES OUTPUT: 10,650 kcal/m²/yr · 2,430 kcal/person/day = ~36.4 trillion kcal/year

POWER REQUIRED: 61 kWh/m²/yr (80% light / 20% heat) · 5.1 MWh/person/yr = 208 TWh/yr

AREA: 83 m²/person · 3,417 km² national = 0.55% of farmland

COST: Efficient mass-manufactured ETFE $360/m² · $30k/person = $1.2T (<5% of GDP annually for 10 years)

*** Energy:

Canada exported 4,295 TWh-equivalent south in 2024…

Not exporting oil requires a pipe + hydrogen conversion (or a lot more than 1 reactor if were continuing to export AND feeding ourselves).

Sarnia is pretty close to Leamington. Max 100km of steam pipe.

*** R&D:

1. If oil → hydrogen → electricity → leds: Solid Oxide Fuel Cells
2. plant photosynthetic efficiency (photorespiration bypass, RuBisCO, low-DLI cultivars)
3. LED 2.8→4.5 µmol/J + spectral tuning
4. ETFE + composite frame · conditional: vertical stacking (cuts capital, raises lighting — only after #3)