When the local bully decides to target you, and you are much smaller; you have a problem. When he takes it further: comes to your home, takes a giant dump in your doorway, and bellows insults and threats; you have a serious problem.
First let us take apart all the idiotic excuses for these unprovoked attacks.
Trade
The ‘master of the deal’ forced the renegotiation of NAFTA, because it was “perhaps the worst trade deal ever made”.
He even got to name the new deal himself in 2018, and make it rhyme with his favourite tune about gay sex; YMCA. You can see him starting to clumsily groove, just for a blink, during his speech at the signing ceremony: “It, sort of, just works: USMCA. USMCA. That’ll be the name, I guess, that, 99 percent of the time, we’ll be hearing: USMCA. It has a good ring to it.” (Trigger warning; watching may result in uncontrollable anal leakage.)
He goes on: “… this new deal will be the most modern, up-to-date, and balanced trade agreement in the history of our country…” And on: “It means, more than anything else, far more American jobs. And these are high-quality jobs.” And on: … it will transform North America back into a manufacturing powerhouse.” And on “…if you look at this agreement, we formed a great partnership with Mexico and with Canada.” And on “Once approved, this will be a new dawn for the American auto industry and for the American autoworker.” And on “We’re going to be a manufacturing powerhouse… “
He grandstanded his way through the entire process, took most of the credit for the final terms, proudly signed off on the new deal; and now he claims we, somehow, screwed him? Canada’s Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland, put one over on the master of the deal? No wonder he so openly despises her; a mere female made him look inept.
Complete bullshit.
Drugs
In 2024; estimates range between .3 and .8% of the fentanyl in the States came from Canada. A US bipartisan committee on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking in 2022 noted: “Canada is not known to be a major source of fentanyl, other synthetic opioids or precursor chemicals to the United States.” And from a 2020 DEA report “Some fentanyl products are smuggled from Canada into the United States for sale; on a much smaller scale.”
Not to make light of the fact that fentanyl and its family of deliberately poisonous drugs are evil and moving all over the world. Nor that we, like the rest of the world, don’t have our own problems with them.
More bullshit.
Refugees
Yes some humans are entering the US from Canada; but we have the rule of law here; we cannot arrest people for trying to leave the country; so how is that our problem? Maybe he needs to build another big beautiful wall. As a side benefit it might even slow down all the illegal guns and drugs smuggled into Canada from the US? But we will absolutely not be paying for it!
Semi-bullshit. Desperate people will take desperate steps to escape desperate circumstances. Only a few years ago, Canada’s borders were being crossed, illegally, by people escaping the US.
But now, here we are. He pulled the trigger on his tariff threats, and changed them before 24 hours went by.
We cannot spend the next four years being jerked around: tariff – countervailing tariff, tit – tat, kiss the ring – get some kind of break, maybe, or a pause, maybe, or not, maybe. Nothing will ever be finalized; anything we may think settled, a done deal, can be undone on a whim. All we can expect are more threats and insults; more deal breaking; more endless bullshit. There is no dodging this confrontation.
Of course we will, without question, be the bigger losers in a trade war. The juvenile digs about being the 51st state do hurt; because they hit awfully too close to home. We are, economically, a vassal state to America. Canada bought as heavily into the neo-liberal myth of globalization as any ‘developed’ nation. Some Canadians still loathe Stephen Harper for signing the first NAFTA in 1994. But I suspect some form of a deal would have been made no matter which party was in power. It was a fashion statement of the times.
The fact that many Americans will also suffer because of these stupid tariffs is no solace. We do not wish our fellow humans any ill; they are just more victims of the same blowhard as we are. I might even suggest that most Canadians have more empathy for the inevitable losers in the States, than their own president does.
But, we must do something.
I hate to agree with Ontario Premier Doug Ford but; don’t pussy foot around does have a certain appeal. Don’t just raise the price of our energy and resources; refuse to export them to the US; cut them off, cold. After all “We don’t need them to make our cars, and they make a lot of them. We don’t need their lumber because we have our own forests. We don’t need their oil and gas. We have more than anybody.” Okay ‘pal’ here’s your chance; prove it.
We must make every effort to find or expand deals with trustworthy trade partners. Seek out products and markets anywhere but America, preferably in Canada, but anywhere else in the world that meets the environmental and labour standards we espouse. A lot of the world is on this same path right now anyway; they are closely watching the same buffoon we are dealing with. I am fully confident we can find willing, and honest, partners.
None of this will be cheap or easy. The Canadian economy will, most likely, take a catastrophic hit, but sometimes it is better to just rip off the bandage and expose the wound. Yeah, it’s going to hurt like hell; but in the longer term we will be healthier for it.
“Canadian Pride” has long meant mastery of the humble brag. “We are better at self-deprecation than anybody. And, even more annoyingly, we are so much nicer.” It’s not that we don’t know that we have our strengths and virtues, or that we don’t care about our country. It’s simply that waving our naughty bits around, and boasting about them, seems a trifle vainglorious; a bit too ‘American’.
I have tried very hard to maintain the Canadian reputation for being hopelessly polite but, occasionally, one must speak of harsher truths with harsher words.
‘Sorry’ but… Donald Trump is an ego onanist, a smelly wet fart in a crowded room, a stain on the species; and proud of it all. He is, simply put, an unrepentant and irredeemable piece of shit. ‘Eh’.
The post Oh Canada: We Stand on Guard for Thee appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Michael Kidder.
Michael Kidder | Radio Free (2025-03-07T06:53:57+00:00) Oh Canada: We Stand on Guard for Thee. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/07/oh-canada-we-stand-on-guard-for-thee/
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