Trump’s threats expose the traitors in our midst

I’m not in the habit of thanking Donald Trump for anything, much less for his increasingly specific threats to my country. They’re an intolerable affront to our sovereignty and independence as well as a reminder of how vulnerable we are to an American president who doesn’t understand or value the idea of friendship. But they have served at least one useful purpose: smoking out the traitors in our collective midst. 

According to a Leger poll from December, 13 per cent of Canadians would like to see their country become the 51st state, as Trump has repeatedly suggested. The highest levels of disloyalty are among PPC supporters (25 per cent), the Conservative Party of Canada (21 per cent) and Albertans (19 per cent). If you can’t see the Venn diagram here, allow me to spell it out more clearly. Among Canadians, nobody is more enthusiastic about abandoning their country to the United States than Conservative Albertans. 

That was validated by a more recent poll from Pallas Data, which found that 30 per cent of Conservative Party of Canada supporters and 24 per cent of Albertans want Canada to become the 51st state. And when asked what Canada should do about Trump’s threatened tariffs, 60 per cent of Conservative supporters think Canada “should do whatever it takes to ensure that the U.S. doesn’t impose tariffs,” with only 24 per cent saying Canada should take a tough stance on Trump’s “overblown” demand. Those figures are basically inverted among NDP and Liberal supporters. 

There’s no shortage of extremely online freedom convoy supporters who, in an irony they can’t seem to appreciate, are vocally rooting for Canada’s surrender to Trump. But it’s not just online trolls that are embracing Trump’s attempt to troll an entire country. Former Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day, for example, seems positively intrigued by the idea of trading in his citizenship. Failed CPC leadership candidate Kevin O’Leary went to Mar-A-Lago in order, he said, to make the case for an economic union between the two countries (in reality, he was there to flog his bid for TikTok). And when the Prime Minister told Trump to pound sand, Conservatives seemed far more interested in criticizing Trudeau. “Outgoing political leaders, much like expired milk, shouldn’t make decisions,” said Patrick Malkin, the deputy chief of staff to Alberta premier Danielle Smith, in a since-deleted tweet.

Malkin’s boss, meanwhile, seems determined to do her best Neville Chamberlain impression. Smith has appeared on every Fox show her staff can book in an effort to sell Trump on Alberta’s value to his administration, which revolves entirely around the oil and gas it ships across the border. This approach assumes he’s open to fact-based persuasion, and ignores the fact that he’s made it clear repeatedly that he’d rather see Americans consume more American oil. Not surprisingly to anyone with even a passing familiarity with history, Smith’s attempts at appeasement have been met with ever-more specific and menacing threats. 

And yet, despite Trump’s escalating rhetoric, Smith still refuses to cancel her trip to his inauguration. Never, not even once, has Smith called Trump out by name. Never, not even once, has she rejected the demonstrably false premises that he’s floated on behalf of his promised tariffs. And never, not even once, has she defended her country’s prime minister from American attacks or deferred to his government’s position in these negotiations. For Smith, it’s clearly party — and petroleum — over country. 

So why are so many Canadian Conservatives welcoming, or at least entertaining, Trump’s advances? Because Justin Trudeau made them do it, apparently. His now infamous remark about how “there is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada” to fellow Canadian Guy Lawson in a 2015 New York Times magazine  profile, one that spoke to his father’s vision for our national culture and its unique ability to embrace difference and diversity, has somehow become an invitation to disloyalty and cowardice. Never mind that it was an attempt to articulate a more inclusive view of our national identity, one that clearly sets us apart from America. For many Conservatives in Canada, Trudeau’s belief in a “post-national” future was all the excuse they ever needed to betray their own country.

This is by far the most pitiful example yet of Trudeau-derangement syndrome, and that’s a category with plenty of strong contenders. It's one thing to dislike a politician, even if that leans heavily on a misunderstood, decade-old quote in the New York Times. It's quite another to let that feeling completely consume your personality to the point where you'd rather side with the world leader threatening to annex your country than the one standing up for it. One thing is for certain: the folks who spent so much time and energy over the last few years publicly professing their supposed love for this country sure seem eager to abandon it.