U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent took a swipe at Canada’s military capabilities Monday, joking that the country’s naval options in an escalating trade dispute amounted to “two submarines from the Edmonton mall.” The line was picked up quickly by CTV News, BNN Bloomberg and other outlets, and it is spreading online for a simple reason: the submarines Bessent referenced haven’t existed in nearly two decades.
Speaking amid the ongoing tariff standoff between Ottawa and Washington, Bessent dismissed the idea that Canada could respond to U.S. pressure with any military leverage, asking, “What, are they going to take their two submarines from the Edmonton mall and sic them on us?” according to CTV News Edmonton, which first reported the remark.
The Joke Doesn’t Hold Up
West Edmonton Mall did, in fact, once operate a fleet of four small tourist submarines as part of its Deep Sea Adventure exhibit, ferrying visitors through the mall’s indoor lake alongside its wave pool and amusement rides. But as CTV News reported, that attraction closed in 2005, and the submarines themselves were broken up for scrap in 2012 — 14 years before Bessent invoked them. There have been no submarines, tourist or otherwise, at West Edmonton Mall for well over a decade.
Part of a Bigger War of Words
The comment landed the same day U.S. Treasury officials were separately trying to lower the temperature on the broader dispute, with the department insisting America is “not at war” with Canada even as steep new U.S. tariffs remain in place and Ottawa’s own retaliatory measures are set to take effect. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has said Canadians are “confused” by the pattern of provocations coming from Washington, which has also included musing about renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America” — a suggestion Quebec’s government moved this week to formally reject on its own online maps.
Bessent’s submarine crack fits that same pattern: a jab clearly meant to needle Canadians rather than make a serious military point, since Canada’s actual naval assets — its Halifax-class frigates and Victoria-class submarines — have nothing to do with a shuttered mall attraction. It is precisely that gap between the insult and the facts that has made the line catch on, with Canadians online quick to point out that a U.S. cabinet official got a basic piece of Alberta trivia wrong while trying to score a point in a trade war that is already reshaping household costs and manufacturing supply chains on both sides of the border.
Why It’s Landing Now
The remark is unlikely to move any actual trade negotiations. But it has become a small, sharable flashpoint in a dispute that otherwise consists of dense tariff schedules and GDP projections — the kind of moment that turns a policy fight into something people share and joke about, for a night at least, before the underlying dispute over tariffs on steel, dairy, appliances and other goods resumes dominating the headlines.
Reporting via CTV News, BNN Bloomberg and Western Standard.
