Trump Inserts Himself Into Canada's Election And Liberals Can't Stop Saying Merci

Yahoo

29-04-2025

At sundown, the night before Monday's federal election, Canadian Prime Minister and Liberal candidate Mark Carney paid his respects to the 11 killed in East Vancouver the night before, when a mentally ill man drove his SUV through a crowd of Filipino-Canadians celebrating Lapu-Lapu Day.
He stood with his wife and British Columbia Premier David Ebey as the mourners sang 'Amazing Grace.' There was sorrow, but no one started blaming immigrants or some 'other' for the incomprehensible mayhem. A continent away, Conservative candidate Pierre Poilievre said a prayer for the lost. All political parties toned down their rhetoric. There was no online culture war. No one disappeared into the judicial system.
Twelve hours later, Donald Trump chimed in.
Ha, you thought maybe he offered condolences. No, he prattled on the woefully named Truth Social, and not in the King's English.
'Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st. State of the United States of America. No more artificially drawn line from many years ago … It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!'
Across the 4,300 miles from Vancouver to Newfoundland that Trump thinks should make up a solitary U.S. state, Canadians drank their morning Tim Hortons and recited the words of the ancient poet Kendrick Lamar:
'We are not the same.'
And then, remarkably, Canada returned the left-for-dead Liberals to power.
They are not the same.
FIRST, LET'S PAUSE for a moment and pay our respects to terrible opinions.
'Sadly, like Biden before him, it is too late. Trudeau's delay leaves his eventual successor with no time to separate themselves from his reign, and the Liberal Party is barreling toward a catastrophic wipeout in a spring or summer election.' —Me
I was wrong, but so was all of Canada. I wrote Justin Trudeau's eulogy in early January. At that point, Canada was done with him. Trudeau's Liberal Party had unevenly staggered through a decade in office, a mishmash of achievements, such as expanded dental care and reconciliation with indigenous Canadians, and prat falls — a young Justin in Aladdin brown face, 20 percent of the population without a primary physician. The country was exhausted and ready for someone with new tricks.
His inevitable successor was Pierre Poilievre, a Ted Cruz clone all the way down to his smarmy, oil-rich Alberta roots, subbing in for Teddy's smarmy, oil-rich Texas. Poilievre and the Canadian conservatives had borrowed some of the techniques of the MAGA movement, framing Trudeau as a Covid despot decreeing vaccine shots for everyone, including truckers moving goods across the country.
Eventually, this resulted in the Convoy protests of early 2022 where a frozen Ottawa, the nation's capital, was invaded by hordes of 18-wheelers driven by anti-vax drivers who sought to win the hearts and minds of Ottawa by, uh, blasting their air horns non-stop for a week. It also marked the beginning of American meddling in Canada's politics. A significant portion of money raised for the truckers came from Americans who had also donated to Donald Trump.
In a non-shocker, Trump, who labeled Black Lives Matters protesters thugs, offered a 'lot of respect' to the almost all white truckers. Poilievre was there in Ottawa flashing thumbs-ups and providing Timbits.
Trudeau retaliated by using emergency measures to disperse the crowd and then froze the assets of protest leaders. The country was split over his tactics but were united in their exhaustion with the current state of play. Inflation was soaring and the Liberals seemed incapable of addressing a housing crisis that plagued the growing country.
Sure, Poilievre gave off all the warmth of a terminal politico born without the empathy gene, and whose dubious political skills are indicated by the fact that Rob Ford, the mega-popular blowfish populist Ontario premier, recently swore he had never had an in-person conversation with the man who would be PM.
No matter. As 2025 began, there was a certainty that Canada would join the rest of Western democracies in throwing out their pandemic government and replace it with Poilievre's Conservatives. Polls had the Conservatives up 25 points on New Year's Day.
How done was the deal? My wife and son are both Canadian citizens so let me indulge in one hockey analogy. It was as if the chronically inept Toronto Maple Leafs led the Montreal Canadians 3-0 in the Stanley Cup Finals, and they were up 5-1 in the third period with the Canadians reduced to playing their third string off the street goalie. Yonge Street was already packed with fornicating drunkards.
And then Trump was elected again. The Maple Leafs still have not won the Cup since 1967.
WHEN TRUMP JOINS Andrew Jackson, Richard Nixon, and George Wallace in an eternal game of blackjack on a casino paddle boat floating down the River Styx, historians will argue what role Donald Trump played in world events, quibbling whether he was the actual disease or just the loudest host as America moved from City on a Hill to Assholeistan. But there will be no argument about one historical event: Donald Trump single-handedly re-elected the Liberals to a fourth consecutive term in charge of The Great White North.
Did it all start with a come-hither glance? Probably not, but let's go there. Trudeau and Trump enjoyed a semi-productive relationship during the game-show host's first term. Some say it soured at the 2019 G-7 Summit where a photo emerged of Melania Trump displaying a Big Gulp thirst for the handsome Justin. Rumor has it that this did not please Donald. Could this be true? Is all the world a stage, and we are all just in a simulation of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton's Cleopatra?
Probably not, but we are looking for a plausible reason to explain Trump's Canadian Toxicity Syndrome. It roared up back in December after Trump and Trudeau had dinner at Mar-A-Largo to discuss trade issues. That night, Trump posted: 'It was a pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada.'
At first, much of Canada brushed it off with, 'Eh, that's Trump just being a dick.' But it never stopped. The president kept calling Trudeau 'governor' and talking about Canada being the '51st state.' It was as if a slow frat boy had gone to the repeat until funny school of comedy with North America's lamest joke.
Oh, and he threatened 25 percent tariffs on all Canadian goods if Canada didn't stop its fentanyl trafficking. (In reality, all the fentanyl flowing from Canada could fit into the back of a single Kia Sportage with plenty of space for a couple of snowboards.) Charitably, America has some legitimate concerns with Canada, an affluent country that has never met its NATO responsibilities and which makes importing American dairy products near impossible. But this was the equivalent of a music critic bitching about Ringo's song on The White Album. It's not really the point when for 200 years Canada has been America's greatest ally co-managing a peaceful 3,000-mile border, and 3.2 million Canadians drop coins in Florida alone every winter.
And what was the point? It all seemed a part of Trump's ketamine-induced internationalism, a strategy centered around pissing off all your allies and cozying up only to assholes like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban. Perhaps Trump theorized that if his bully-boy tactics worked with Senate Democrats it would work with Canada. Eventually, Trump moved the rhetoric and levied said tariffs on Canadian goods coming into America, Canada's primary trade partner. Car factories began laying off workers in plants outside of Toronto. That led in February to the lame-duck Trudeau saying the president lusted for Canada's natural resources.
'Mr. Trump has it in mind that the easiest way to do it is absorbing our country and it is a real thing,' he said.
Things changed. The American national anthem was booed in Canadian arenas. Repeatedly. Those Canadian snowbirds? They came home early, and Canada-American border crossings dropped precipitously. As Trump snatch-and-grab immigration policies took center stage, Canadian universities urged their students not to visit America. The Liberal show was recast. Trudeau exited the scene and was replaced by Mark Carney, best known for serving as governor of the Bank of Canada guiding the nation through the 2008 banking crisis and, improbably, a term as governor of the Bank of England during the catastrophic economic aftermath of Brexit. Canada is going through another financial nightmare, so a financial miracle man had its appeal.
Carney's first move was semi-brilliant politically. Poilievre and the Conservatives had been beating Trudeau's Liberals with a pillowcase full of oranges for years over their support of a carbon tax that was doubling the heating costs of Canadians. Carney's solution? He abolished the tax. (If this was Model UN, the smart kids would be shouting 'Canada is voting out of policy.') It made absolutely no sense in the context of Canada's larger climate policies, but it reset the game, something American Democrats could learn from.
Poilievre had built his whole campaign around the carbon tax and Trudeau's unpopularity. Suddenly, both were gone, replaced by Trump looming over Canada like a giant inflatable rat at a miners strike.
This was when Poilievre and the Conservative's decision to ape Trump's campaign with a 'Canada First' motto turned out to be too clever by half. And this was when many Canadian conservative websites stopped selling their 'Make Canada Great Again' caps. Poilievre had played himself. His rabble-rousing populism too closely echoed Trump's rabble-rousing populism in a country where American products were being stripped from shelves. Trump-Geppetto had made Poilievre Pinocchio a real boy and Canadians wanted to return him to the nearest Tire Warehouse.
Trump and Poilievre both underestimated Canada. They both bought the cliche that saying 'sorry' is not Canada's hardest word, but a way of life. They assumed the country would bow and scrape before the president. They got it exactly wrong.
I've spent much of the past seven years in Canada, and I have a theory about this. (Judge it warily, as it comes from someone who once wrote Canada was defended by two mighty oceans, forgetting the Arctic.) Yes, Canada can be just as dysfunctional as any Western democracy where capitalism is all about breaking through the ceiling and not the floor. There are homeless in the streets and the middle class is being squeezed into nothingness. What separates Canada from the United States is that there still is a floor and a semblance of fair play. Racial and sexual minorities fare better here. There still is universal health care. The safety net sags, but still holds the weakest of Canadians.
Let me tell you a story. About six years ago, I was taken by ambulance to a Vancouver hospital with a severe but not life-threatening esophageal problem. I found myself lying on a gurney next to a handcuffed man who was bleeding. He was also wanted for a murder back in Ontario. The doctor looked at both of us and then treated the murderer first. That was the right thing to do. We both left the hospital owing zero dollars. That's a long way of saying Canada still has a sense of fairness. Nothing makes Canuck angry more than some jackass American thinking the rules of international decency do not apply to them. When that happens, yes, the elbows go up.
Back to Ottawa, the clock is about to turn yesterday into tomorrow. Pierre Poilievre? Not only has he lost the election, but he's lost his own seat in Parliament. Meanwhile, in an Ottawa ballroom, Mark Carney hugs his wife, listens to Canadians chant his name and begins to speak. It is not a happy talk.
'As I've warned, America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country,' says Carney. 'But these are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never ever happen… The system of open global trade anchored by the United States, a system that Canada has relied on since the Second World War, a system that while not perfect has helped deliver prosperity for our country for decades, is over. It's also our new reality. We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons.'
He pauses for a moment before continuing.
'We have to look out for ourselves and above all we have to take care of each other.'
That's the Canadian Way.
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