Canadian and American flags fly on the Canadian side of the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ont., on March 8.GEOFF ROBINS/AFP/Getty Images
So far, David is bashing Goliath.
In round one of his gratuitous, greed-driven tariff war, the intrinsically mendacious Donald Trump has been changing his mind on levies by the minute, governing by capricious, vindictive whim.
He’s left the stock markets reeling, had his work called the “dumbest ever” by the leading financial journal in the U.S., and violated his own trade treaty with Canada. He’s ravaged a historic partnership, raised the spectre of a recession, crashed his honeymoon.
While prowling the moral low ground in his cockroach-orange tint, Mr. Trump has galvanized Canadians, supercharging our national pride. With the exception of a sizable cohort in Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party who support Mr. Trump, Canada is united behind one voice – a voice which hollers, ”We will not back down.”
For good measure, Mr. Trump has enormously affected Canadian politics just the way he did not intend. Instead of helping fellow populists north of his border, he has revived the Liberal Party and allowed his troll target, Justin Trudeau, to leave on a positive note because of his government’s strong stance on the tariffs. When people wave at Mr. Trudeau, they’re now more inclined to use all fingers.
Explainer: The Canada-U.S. tariff war has de-escalated, but not ended. Here are the latest updates
With Mr. Trump being pilloried partout and on the defensive for his recklessness, while our performance is heady, we’re winning the tariff war. But it’s only in its initial stage. Great convulsions are yet to come. On April 2, a full slate of White House protectionist measures will be unleashed.
On our side, the solidarity the country has brandished risks being fractured as an election campaign begins. From the Liberals, a push to cast Mr. Poilievre as mini-MAGA will intensify. From the Conservatives, Operation Smear Mark Carney is beginning in earnest.
Aggressively spearheading the Canadian charge against the convicted felon in the White House has been Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Normally this would be of help to the federal Conservatives, but Mr. Ford isn’t cozy with Mr. Poilievre’s ideologically hardened party and has a good rapport with the Liberals, factors that could affect the coming campaign.
With the new patriotism sweeping the land, Mr. Poilievre is changing tack from being the land-is-broken guttersnipe to a super patriot and Trump decrier. That’s not all that simple when polls have shown support in his party for Mr. Trump. The President’s 51st-state threats have decreased it, but a Leger poll last week showed that 18 per cent of Conservatives, still an appalling number, are okay with his bid to annex Canada.
Mr. Poilievre has to walk a tightrope. The Americanizers supporting him are political poison, but there are too many in number for him to outright disown.
Such sensitivities may explain what happened last week when the Canada-U.S. Inter-Parliamentary Group gathered in Washington. The Canadian members met with about 25 American legislators. Usually the delegation includes about nine Conservative MPs. This time they were no-shows. Why weren’t they allowed to be part of the Team Canada contingent, wondered Liberal MP John McKay, who is head of the group, at such an important moment?
What the contingent found didn’t bode well. There was paranoia on the Potomac. Republicans weren’t just under pressure to toe the party line, said Mr. McKay. Far worse than that, he said it was clear some of them actually feared physical violence to them and their families if they strayed.
The Canada-U.S. group has been meeting since 1959. Mr. McKay said he suspects Mr. Trump will shut it down. His group didn’t find Democrats to be very vocal in opposing the Trump tariffs either. Their ears only perked up when told retaliatory tariffs would affect their constituencies.
Democrat Gordon Giffin, a former ambassador to Canada from 1997 to 2001, was more optimistic about the crisis being resolved. He and many Democrats were making the case that “the tariffs related to Canada make zero sense,” he said in an e-mail.
“I think Canada’s response on things like potash, energy and others day by day will motivate members of Congress and Governors to more aggressively push back on Canada’s tariffs and successfully stop it.”
The problem, David MacNaughton, our former ambassador to Washington, told me is that Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro, an anti-Canadian wingnut, has Mr. Trump’s ear. Anything he whispers in it, said Mr. MacNaughton, comes out Mr. Trump’s mouth.
Nothing, he added, can be fully sorted out until after the Canadian election when the new government is known. Then it will be up to either Governor Carney or Governor Poilievre, as Mr. Trump will likely call them, to make good on the commitment that Canada will never back down.