In response to what is obviously a bargaining ploy by Donald Trump to use economic force to get what he wants from us, our now “former, but still there” PM has come out swinging. A defiant Trudeau, in boxing stance, told Trump (not to his face, mind you) “there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell” that this would happen. Trudeau told us that despite his humiliating forced retirement, he would be our “Captain Canada.”
But wait! Where did this sudden rush of Canadian patriotism come from? Wasn’t this the same PM who told us that Canada wasn’t even a nation at all — a “post-national state with no core identity” — and that we were a genocidal, racist country, where it is “understandable” that our churches were burned and our statues toppled?
Let’s look at his newfound patriotism. Perhaps we should start where Trudeau’s leadership started to unravel: His embarrassing trip to Mar-a-Lago to beg Trump not to impose tariffs, as Trump had threatened.
Trump’s mischievous reply is now famous. Trump suggested that maybe Canada should become America’s 51st state, with Trudeau as “governor.” Trudeau chuckled uncomfortably.
This is legitimately funny. But Canadians don’t want to be a state. That’s why the United Empire Loyalists gave up everything and travelled, at great personal risk, to the Great White North in 1783; why we fought the War of 1812; why we were desperate to keep the Fenians out; why we argued ferociously over boundary and tariff disputes. And on and on.
But perhaps Trump’s election and his joke might be a good time for all of us to reflect on the last decade and ask each other what Canada has become and what we want it to be — or if we want it to continue.
Or do we want just to give it all up, and become the 51st state? (If they would even have us, that is.)
Things have become uncertain up here in the cold northern part of the continent since Justin Trudeau came to power in 2015.
Remember what he said when he arrived in Ottawa. He said that Canada was not what we always thought it was — a nation that had come into being in the 19th century as a merger of British and French peoples, a nation that fought two world wars, depressions and epidemics — and had evolved into a thoroughly decent country, welcoming people from all parts of the globe. A tolerant country with a rich history and culture that we could all be proud of.
But Trudeau said it wasn’t that at all. Instead, he opined that Canada was a post-national state, with no core identity.
Most of us didn’t know what he was talking about.
However, what he meant became clear soon after the first election of Donald Trump in 2016. Trump campaigned largely on immigration and wanted uncontrolled immigration stopped.
Trudeau wrote his famous tweet to show how different he was from Trump, welcoming anybody and anybody from anywhere- no questions asked. (That tweet was also just one of many of Trudeau’s anti-Trump slurs — some behind Trump’s back – that have now put our country in Trump’s line of fire.)
Simply put, to Trudeau, a “post-national state” didn’t need borders!
That was the beginning of the immigration mess we have in Canada today — a mess that now includes antisemitic foreign “students” who should not be in Canada, rioting in Montreal, and calling for a “Final Solution.” Canada went almost overnight from having a secure border and a respected and well-run immigration system, to the disaster both are today.
That is exactly the border insecurity problem Trump points to when he threatens Canada with crippling 25% tariffs.
And just when Canadians were beginning to digest the news that being a “post-national state” meant having no borders, Trudeau let it slip that his vision of a Canada “with no core identity” also meant that Canada was a “systemically racist” country. Remember when then RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucky said that she didn’t believe Canada was “systematically racist” as alleged? Trudeau forced her to backtrack on that common sense observation — an observation that most Canadians would agree with. And to keep her job, Lucky confessed her thoughtcrime and pronounced Canada guilty as charged.
It then appeared that what Trudeau meant by Canada “having no core identity” also meant that our proud history was in fact rather tawdry and should be erased.
Then things went from bad to worse. Not content with slamming his own country as systematically racist, Trudeau went on to accuse the country that he was leading as committing an ongoing genocide against Indigenous girls and women.
He subsequently extended his genocide j’accuse to condemn Canada as being guilty of “cultural genocide” concerning all Indigenous children who had ever attended residential schools.
It is impossible that attendance at residential schools was “cultural genocide” because the choice of whether to send their children to a residential school or a day school belonged to the indigenous parent. Parents had to apply in writing to have their child admitted to a residential school. Were indigenous parents committing “cultural genocide” on their children by choosing to send them to residential schools? That is an absurdity.
Trudeau ramped up his genocide accusation after the claim was made that the “remains of 215 children” had been found at Kamloops.” That claim was false from the outset. No “remains” were found. The inexperienced radar operator had found an old excavation but mistook it for graves. But that didn’t stop Trudeau from lowering flags, kneeling with teddy bears, and pretending that children had been secretly buried there. He gave that false claim credibility with those theatrics.
Finally, he presided over a Parliament that unquestioningly accepted these false Kamloops claims to go all hog and condemn Canada as being guilty of pure genocide.
So, Canada went in one fell swoop from being a proud nation that correctly accused Communist leaders China of committing genocide against its Uighur population to being accused by its own prime minister and his Communist China friends of genocide against its own people.
That is apparently what a country with “no core identity” is. There’s nothing there worth saving, so statues can be toppled, former leaders can be slandered, and our essentially proud history can be denigrated. And our public treasury can be wasted on any Liberal vanity projects with monetary appeal.
Conrad Black describes where Canada is today. A thoroughly degraded, internationally disrespected shadow of its former self is being investigated for committing genocide.
We have fallen very far since 2015. Should we now just give up and go begging to Mar-a-Lago to have Canada grafted onto Montana?
It wouldn’t take that much to get Canada up and running again. Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” would be a good place to start. Canada has immense fossil fuel wealth, most of which is largely untapped.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was interviewed on Fox Business News on precisely this topic. Premier Smith discussed her plan to double Alberta’s fossil fuel output and expressed her willingness to work towards a revival of the Keystone pipeline, which would transport enormous quantities of oil to American refineries. Alberta’s crude oil happens to be exactly the kind of heavy crude that those refineries need
For those concerned about CO2 emissions, Premier Smith explained how Alberta has developed one of the best carbon recapture systems on the planet. In her words, the pipeline would be a “win-win” for everyone.
Will Keystone happen?
Some experts predict that Trump will announce a revival of Keystone XL on his first day in office.
Many obstacles stand in the way of such a revival, so it can’t be predicted with any certainty that it will happen. However, one sure thing is that leaders like Trump and Smith are determined to get our respective economies out of the doldrums that the Biden and Trudeau regimes have forced on our respective economies, with their fixation on ideological fetishes like “climate emergency,” trans ideology etc.
Both will focus on common sense, and business-friendly policies designed to create jobs and let entrepreneurs do what they do.
Trudeau — after thoroughly degrading Canada in every way — has finally agreed to step down. He has chosen to do so in such a way that the maximum damage will be inflicted on our already wounded country. But his latest act — namely as “Captain Canada” is surely his greatest insult of all.
Brian Giesbrecht, retired judge, is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
