By Kelly Sloan | Contributing Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
This made the rounds a couple weeks ago: President-elect Trump, fresh off of announcing his intention to impose a 25% tariff on Candidian goods, reportedly floated to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau the idea of absorbing Canada into the Republic as the 51st state.
True to form, he immortalized the offer as a clever image on his social media website, Truth Social.
The suggestion, everyone knows, was not serious. Trump stands a better chance of buying Greenland from the Danes (a proposal he recently resurrected, this one perhaps semi-seriously.) But it speaks volumes, both to the embattled Canadian PM’s posture in general, and the incoming President’s disdain for him. And given the governing record of the Trudeau era, it’s not an entirely unreasonable alternative.
Trump made the joking gesture after a hastily requested dinner between he two at Mar-o-Lago, following the tariff announcement. A 25% tariff on Canadian imports is obviously a dreadful prospect for Canada (it would not do much good for the U.S.A. either, for that matter), but Trudeau looked more like — well, like the childishly arrogant, mildly befuddled, former drama teacher that he is, rather than a serious head of state of a closely allied nation with reasonable concerns and a proposed solution. Trump saw right through him.
In many ways, this little episode is a suitable summary of Justin Trudeau’s tenure as Prime Minister. His only qualification, if one could call it that, for the office was that he happens to be the son of a guy who before Justin took over would easily be considered the worst Prime Minister in Canada’s history. And, I’m told, he looks good on camera.
Trudeau’s government has essentially been hanging on by a thread for some time now, and everyone knows it. The governing Liberal Party consistently polls around 18-20% behind the opposition Conservatives. Two weeks ago Deputy Prime Minster Chrystia Freeland, who also served as Finance Minister, quite ostentatiously resigned, mere hours before she was set to give a budget briefing to Parliament – one which was expected to announce that Canada’s budget deficit was rather larger than thought — issuing a public list of grievances that outlined her differences with the boss, including suggestion that he had mismanaged the economy with policies the Canadian people could – her words – “ill afford”. Freeland said that she believed – not unreasonably – that the Great White north ought to be “keeping our fiscal powder dry today, so we have the reserves we may need for a coming tariff war.” Trudeau, on the other hand, evidently believes that it’s a swell idea to keep spending money the country doesn’t have.
It’s a little ironic that the Trump policy that evokes the greatest amount of conservative critique – the abandonment of free trade in favor of tariffs – may be the one that proves to be the final nail in the political coffin of one of the most unrepentantly leftist leaders in the Western world.
But really, that coffin was being nailed shut long before Trump re-entered the picture. Trudeau has presided over what can only be called a disastrous economy. The nation’s GDP fell by 5% during COVID, about twice what America’s did, due mostly to far more draconian lockdowns. The U.S. economy, post-covid, is expected to have grown by 11% — Canda’s by a paltry 6%. The country’s projected deficit is around $39.8 billion, or about 1.6% of GDP. The Canadian dollar has sunk to 70 cents against the U.S. dollar, the lowest in recent history. The Economist reports that in 2019 Canada was a little richer than Montana. Now it’s poorer than Alabama.
And that’s before we even get into the onslaught of leftist cultural policies, the hated carbon tax, and the COVID-related crackdown on individual liberty that would have had the communist dictators that his father admired so much raising an approving eyebrow and applauding.
Justin Trudeau is a laughing stock on the world stage – not only to Trump. The once-proud Canadian military, which helped win WWII, and then was nearly decimated under Trudeau Sr, and finally began something of a revival under Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the early 2000’s, is once again on the ropes, a shadow of what it ought to be, and once was. The deficit is larger than Canada’s defence budget, never mind the 2% of GDP NATO countries are expected to provide to help mount the West’s collective defence. And Canada’s contribution to Ukraine under Trudeau? Canada is still the 9th largest economy in the world (barely) but came in 21st in terms of military aid to Ukraine. Being the leader of a free Western democracy seems to require more than simply pirouetting for the cameras, like his old man was wont to do.
There is some good news. The leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, Conservative Pierre Poilievre, seems well positioned to take the reins, and offers a competent, intelligent, responsible contrast to the current clownish figure occupying 24 Sussex. Ms. Freeland had the right idea, to abandon ship as it is going down rather than drown. Justin Trudeau has done an incredible amount of damage to Canada. If he harbours any shred of care for the nation he was elected to lead, he will call it quits now, rather than wait, and call an election. Doing so may be the last best chance for his country – incidentally, the land of my birth — to reclaim the mantle of “true north, strong and free.”
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.