Many sources confirm that Canada has serious security problems that hostile powers exploit extensively. The Canada-is-back naïveté animating the decaying Trudeau regime led to open borders and infiltration of foreign operatives inside key Canadian institutions, from the Winnipeg Lab to the Parliament of Canada.
Allies question Canada’s eagerness to engage in an open diplomatic conflict with India, the world’s largest democracy and fastest-growing economy while overlooking China’s significantly more damaging actions despite being a formidable adversary to Western democracies today.
Possibly 40 percent of those caught or suspected of potential terror activities inside the United States entered through Canada. It is also well documented that the unguarded border is the point of entry for a significant amount of deadly illegal drugs like fentanyl coming from China. At Canada’s ports of entry, authorities have openly admitted to checking less than 1 percent of all incoming containers. The net effect is that significant illegal activity, including human trafficking, comes into the United States through Canada.
That the situation on the US southern border is worse and there is plenty of crime coming into Canada from the US are lousy excuses not to act; Ottawa must not avoid its duty to guarantee the security of Canadians as much as to help protect our neighbour and closest ally. Fixing some of the border problems would be objectively good for Canada.
In the US, President Donald Trump aims to restore order. He is reversing his predecessor’s chaotic open-border policies to enhance the country’s security.
In part, perhaps because of frustration, and mostly because bombasts and hyperbole are his nature, Trump wants Canada to help him plug the security holes Canada’s cavalier attitude to security enables.
That is why Trump has threatened to slap a 25 percent tariff on all Canadian goods unless Canada does something about the border.
However, between Chrystia Freeland quitting Trudeau’s cabinet and Justin Trudeau quitting his party leadership, most references to Trump’s tariff threats have omitted the border conditions, as if the threats came from nothing.
Why is that?
Tackling the border problems, even if they are not as pronounced as the border issues with Mexico, where Trump has declared a state of emergency, is a big enterprise. It would be complex and costly, challenging to organize, set up and implement. However, the Trudeau government has spent billions on more superfluous things than securing the national interest and maintaining better relations with our most significant trade partner. What could be more vital?
But rather than address the condition for the threat, the Liberal establishment has decided to magnify the threat, pound their chests and counterattack.
Yet, a trade war with the United States would be infinitely more costly than fixing the border problems, which would have the fringe benefits of ensuring greater Canadian security and being a good neighbour. The Canada-United States two-way trade in goods and services clocks over US$900 billion, and bilateral investment stock is worth over 1 trillion.
But the faltering party in office, faced with the prospect of being wiped out electorally, has opted to put itself ahead of the country’s economy. They claim the Trump tariffs are an existential threat, which is true, and that must be the reason to avoid them by addressing the border conditions.
Opting instead to mount a bravado campaign is a deliberate choice to push Canadians to believe the Liberals are fighting for them and the country. How often does Freeland say fight in her one-minute video launching her leadership campaign?
To the folks that tolerated Chinese spies in the Winnipeg Lab and police stations in Canada, being on the side of fixing the border problems is somehow now anti-Canadian and treasonously pro-Trump. In the Liberal Manicheanism, fully displayed in their overreaction to the Freedom Convoy, all disagreement with their policy prescriptions is hatred and treason.
The governing party’s decision to exploit the Trump threat is as deliberately manipulative as their handling of the COVID event. They will do what is best for the party and their position of power and are willing to sacrifice the economy and further weaken the country in exchange for a slight chance to remain in power. At the very least, they might lessen the impending electoral blow against them.
One cannot blame the Liberals for seeking advantage and survival. But let’s be clear that the price may be the country’s economy. The damage to the Canadian economy is collateral in their existential fight against Poilievre’s Conservatives, whom they’re busy ridiculously portraying as an enemy of Canada for the sake of electoral points.
So far, the MSM are running with the Liberal narrative. The border conditions have receded from view, and the media seem only interested in peddling conflict and fear, ironically claiming to be on the side of saving the economy.
Just like in the COVID event, the narrative obscures dire facts. It promotes goals contrary to Canadian interests, security, and livelihood, seeking to protect an embattled Laurentian elite bent on clinging to power.
Marco Navarro-Genie is the VP of Research and Policy at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. With Barry Cooper, he is co-author of Canada’s Covid: The Story of a Pandemic Moral Panic (2023).
