"The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past"
Robertson Davies, Canadian novelist, journalist and playwright, native son of Thamesville, Ontario
Given the events of the past six months, namely the re-election of Donald Trump as U.S. president and the phoenix-like resurgence of the Liberal Party of Canada, this particular Canada Day is a unique one. This year our flag-waving will be a little more impassioned because of the looming socio-economic threat we as Canadians are facing vis-a-vis the Trump Administration.
On January 7, during the apparent winter of his discontent with northern geopolitics, Trump said he wanted to annex Canada through economic force and do the same with Greenland for military security. Since then Canada has new leadership with Mark Carney as Prime Minister and a governing Liberal Party that does not at all resemble what it was a mere six months ago. Here is what I mean. The government just passed Bill C-5. Most Canadians barely noticed because their government is still in honeymoon mode but the Indigenous peoples noticed as did the environmentalists and some others. Bill C-5, now the law of the land, empowers the government to leap over any existing law standing in the way of a project it wants done. For instance, if environmental and Indigenous laws are in the way of building a pipeline, too bad. These laws, many of them created by the last batch of Liberals, will be trumped by Bill C-5, created by this new batch of Liberals. Regardless of the opposition parties' views on this, most revealing was what Toronto Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith recently said of his own government's policy, "This bill would make even [Stephen] Harper blush. Liberals would rightly scream...if a federal Conservative government attempted the same." Serious Liberal voters must be aghast. For the record, the federal Conservatives supported the government in passing this legislation. This law is a federal version of the Ontario PC government's Bill 5 which also recently became law.
We can shake our heads at this and curse our politicians for their perceived heartlessness but the reality is, they don't have much of a choice. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has to deal with the Great Lakes states. Mark Carney has to deal with Donald Trump and his penchant for slapping tariffs on everything. Just last Friday, Canada said it would impose a retroactive digital services tax on American high tech firms. Trump was furious and the Americans walked away from trade negotiations. By this past Sunday, Carney rescinded this tax and everyone is back at the negotiating table. Trump's comments on this? "We hold all the cards." With utter glee, White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, announced to reporters that, "Canada caved to President Trump and the United States of America!" Carney wants a trade deal with the U.S. in place by July 21, just three weeks from now. There is no telling what else we'll have to "cave" on to achieve that goal.
It's not all bad news, though. Not by a long shot. Geography has conjoined Canada with the United States and we could have had far worse neighbours. The Ukrainians got Russia. Taiwan is constantly under threat from China. Israel is surrounded by countries that want to wipe the Jewish state from the face of the earth. Canada and the U.S. are more than just neighbours. We share a common language and a similar culture and, for the most part, our citizenries like each other. Our friends and relatives often straddle the border. There are Canadians in American government positions and vice-versa. I could go on but all that to say we share more than just a land mass. And Canada needs the U.S. We need their protection militarily from some covetous nations and we need their business to make our economy vibrant. Justin Trudeau admitted as much to Donald Trump in the waning days of his leadership. Canada has a Catch-22 existence. We feel threatened by the American vortex but without it, there is no Canada. The one-time leader of the federal Social Credit Party, Robert Thompson, once joked, "The Americans are our best friends whether we like it or not". The challenge for the Carney government is to negotiate a new relationship with our best friends while feeling the strain of being their best friends.
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