Even though I grew up as an “Air Force brat” I had no idea that Canada’s military regularly developed a counteroffensive and defensive strategy to address the possibility of the United States sending its armed forces into Canada to annex our nation.
It’s a threat our nation once had to consider when then Democratic presidential candidate James Polk uttered the phrase, “Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!”, and invigorated America’s fascination with the principles of “Manifest Destiny” and the United States under Providence’s direction to be unburdened of restriction to their “right” to resettle the millions of individuals immigrating to the States, even if that meant displacing those who were here before their arrival. U.S. presidents have since utilized that rallying notion to annex Texas, California and Oregon, as well as create wars with Cuba, Mexico, Panama and Hawaii; President Trump, however, is now resurrecting its meaning by suggesting that the U.S. should annex Canada, purchase Greenland, reclaim the Panama Canal, turn war-torn Gaza into a golf course, and perhaps even in the future with the assistance of oligarchs rushing to support his presidency, plant the Stars and Stripes on Mars.
Canada’s dreams are not so futuristic and grand; we just want the bullying being laid upon our nation by a convicted felon and thug who threatens to disrupt our economy, impose meaningless tariffs upon goods we provide the rest of the world, claims that our laissez-faire “socialistic” attitudes and laxity in support of law and order cause great harm to his jurisdictions, yet refuses to acknowledge that we already know the motivation driving his assault: a coveting of what we as a nation have to offer the world, be it our natural and rare resources, our water, or even our access to the Arctic shores, where even more riches are potentially made available for him to plunder and grow ever wealthier in the process.
Our most senior government has instinctively understood what it is that Trump is attempting to do in this assault; after all, he did attempt to diminish our economic role on the North American continent by demanding a renegotiation of the NAFTA agreement. As to Trump’s embarrassingly weak case for our being huge suppliers of killer drugs such as fentanyl or our laxity in keeping the “unwanted” away from American soil we had already dealt with these issues even while Biden was president; therefore, to them it was merely a need to remain silent on other nation-to-nation matters and wait for Trump to drop the second shoe and tell us what he really wanted from us.
To our constitutional “branch plant” leaders of our provinces and territories, however, this “waiting around” for things to happen leaves them without opportunity to express their own concerns as to how Trump’s efforts to destabilize our economy could affect them. Thus, frightened as their own constituents grow nervous (as Trump might well have predicted) and thus wanting their own leadership qualities to be displayed before their voters, they collectively journey to Trump’s Washington, and awed by the very fact that they are even met by those responsible for putting Trump’s political agenda in motion, argue for their deliverance from such punishment by promoting their “strength” in providing the U.S. with essential product, be it oil, potash, uranium, electricity or even our water, failing to realize in their confessions that these same glad-handers who greeted them with such sincerity will in turn report to Trump as to the contents of these conversations, which he will in turn peruse for weaknesses in their arguments or to choose targets for further economic attack.
To date, the premiers’ efforts have produced nothing save assurances by their Trump hosts that the discussions were “worthwhile”, and perhaps even clarifying; however, the only thing we do know is that after a 30 day period of “consideration”, our imports will be targeted for a 25 per cent tariff surcharge, and just after March 15th, aluminum and steel products will have a further 25% tacked onto this tariff burden, and we still have no idea as to how Canada will respond, if at all.
Many options have been proposed to counterattack: encourage “buy Canadian” campaigns, slap a 10 per cent or larger export duty tax on electricity, aluminum, potash, uranium, rare minerals, and oil, increase the flow of oil for export to the BC coast, tear down Canada’s internal trade barriers between provinces, modernize our national rail freight and passenger systems, and target American oligarchs onside with Trump’s objectives by helping labour unionize their employees (Amazon, Wal-Mart, etc.).
Equally ignored is the reality that we also have concerns as to how Americans deal with our concerns, in particular lax attention being paid to guns being imported to Canada by criminal organizations, auto theft, human smuggling activities or even potential terrorist threats, the substance of which American law enforcement agencies tend to deny Canadian authorities knowledge or plans of action to ameliorate such actions. Equally annoying is that in but another jab at our military readiness Trump is now “suggesting” that we should be spending up to 5 per cent of our GNP on defence, even though the United States spends only around 2.4 per cent, and most members of Congress consider even this figure to be excessive.
Canada, of course, isn’t the only nation confounded by Trump’s actions. On Wednesday, he had a long chat with Russian puppet master Vladimir Putin pertaining to its invasion of Ukraine, only to get off the phone and tell Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that Crimea was now “Russian territory”, chastising him for even engaging in this war in the first place, that his presence wouldn’t be required when Trump and Putin would draft the terms of settlement next month in Saudi Arabia. But not to worry; it wouldn’t be necessary for the Ukrainian president to have to waste his time negotiating the terms of capitulation, as President Trump would take care of these matters when he and Putin next meet in Saudi Arabia – then leaving it to “recovering” alcoholic and U.S. Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth to tell Zelenskyy that its application to join NATO wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.
Thus, in less than two days Trump succeeded in signaling to its NATO allies that not only had he sold them out by ignoring Russia’s attempts at expanding its empire, but that the U.S. could care less that Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had just become increasingly vulnerable to future attempts by Putin to recreate the USSR’s Cold War sphere of influence.
As for his next forays into acts of “diplomacy”, Trump now intends to support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel’s war in Gaza can proceed, as he will expect Jordan and Egypt (but not Saudi Arabia) to “resettle” what remains of a Gaza population, victims of an eternal war reignited in its fury by Hamas extremists venting their hatred of the Jewish state by butchering over 1,000 Israeli settlers, then cowardly retreating to hide amongst the innocents who will never have any say as to who will govern their future.
At the moment, we can no longer feel safe in the knowledge that the U.S.A. under Trump’s leadership is our “friend” –a fact that sooner or later our leaders must recognize. We need an “alternative” to be registered with Americans that we’re tired of listening to this ignorant narcissist, and perhaps it’s time that we consider a more drastic demonstration of this reality, to possibly even bringing a motion before NATO membership that the United States should be expelled from the organization, simply because its membership no longer has the confidence that this member nation will adhere to the mutual support and defense clauses embedded within those agreements, thereby letting the entire world know what they think of Trump’s “word”.
