OPINION:
Recently, the long-awaited trade deal between Canada and America collapsed, and the Trump administration summarily imposed tariffs on a swath of Canadian goods and industries.
Although it might soothe the Liberal soul here in Canada, it is impossible to claim that the Canada-U.S. trade deal collapsed because of any American animosity or that President Trump’s tariffs began out of the blue.
Over the past decade, Canada’s Liberal government has willfully abandoned and tried to destroy the Great White North’s historic alliance with the United States.
First, it effectively aborted the two countries’ military alliance. Canada has failed to fulfill even the basic aspects of its military partnership with the U.S., as well as its duties to organizations such as NORAD and NATO.
In fact, the Liberal government has refused to aid America’s intervention in Iran. Prime Minister Mark Carney himself confirmed that Canada will no longer abide by or honor its U.S. military alliance.
The Carney government has also actively rejected and altered key features of Canada’s military supply chain and its relationship with America to forge paper-thin alliances with various European states.
Worse still, the Canadian state itself now represents a distinct national security threat to the U.S. because of its own national collapse and sympathetic relationship with America’s enemies.
The Liberal government has also grossly distorted and violated the U.S.-Canada economic relationship.
For instance, Canada has long imposed inordinate tariffs on various American industries, companies and goods. Over the course of the past decade, the Liberal government consistently imposed 400% tariffs on American farmers and “extracted a persistent average annual goods trade deficit of roughly $50 billion from the U.S.,” according to the White House.
Since 2015, Canada’s Liberal government has throttled the earnest labor of hardworking Americans and forced U.S. companies out of business to consolidate Canada’s economic alliances with a cohort of nations more “progressive” than Mr. Trump’s America (such as Britain and China).
In fact, the government has transformed Canada into a slavish vehicle for Beijing’s national interests and allied itself with the Chinese Communist Party. It routinely helps China evade tariffs and access America’s free markets via illegal transshipment.
Mr. Carney has even happily confirmed that his globalist regime seeks to erect a “new world order” and a “new strategic partnership” with communist China.
The Carney government recently ratified a “secret police agreement” that forces Canada’s national police service to work with Beijing’s Ministry of Public Security. Senior Liberal political actors have long maintained intimate relationships with the CCP and now personally champion the national interests of communist China.
Finally, for more than a decade, Canada’s Liberal government has attacked Mr. Trump and oriented itself against his administration.
Mr. Carney has condemned the Trump White House on many occasions, all in an effort to distract from his own failure as prime minister. He has explicitly declared Canada’s previous relationship with U.S. “over” and called it “a weakness that must be corrected.”
He has also called the U.S. under Mr. Trump “a country we can no longer trust.”
Other Liberal politicians have openly clashed with Mr. Trump. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called Mr. Trump’s politics “dumb” and said Canada was an “antithesis” to America’s “aggressive nationalism.”
Canada has become so overtly hostile to Mr. Trump’s America that China’s state media recently praised Mr. Carney’s “Chinese-style” opposition to the U.S.
So, although certainly a painful trial, Mr. Trump’s Canadian tariffs are not some unprovoked, unfair attack on a hapless northern neighbor.
The Liberal Party’s loathing for all things President Trump has become so visceral that Canada’s national identity has been replaced with a frenzied species of hatred for the U.S.
Now, “not American” is the sum total of what it means to be Canadian.
• William Barclay is an award-winning political theorist and one of Canada’s leading conservative voices (Twitter/X @WillBarclayPCBG).
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