Canada’s different reality

 The malignant American felon-in-chief and his self-satisfiedly ignorant sycophants have, during the last two months, proven for the short and medium term that few Americans are our friends and that half of them are our enemy.  Problematically, this cannot be understood by a significant number of Canadians. Among federal Conservative Party supporters 13 per cent want Canada to become America’s 51st state, and one-third agree with Mr. Trump’s actions.

I cannot imagine any federal Conservative Party leader having either the political power or the courage to counter the fixation a third of conservatives have with radical right-wing Americanism. Anyone who believes any Conservative leader can fully focus on Canada while keeping that one-third in check is mistaken, because that one-third has nowhere to go, politically. It will, therefore, always be a strong, clamouring presence in Canadian conservatism. The Peoples’ Party will never govern. That is why the one-third shelters in the Conservative “big tent”, to the detriment of that Party, because the views of the far right one-third are unpalatable to a majority of Canadians.

Alberta’s premier can not (or will not) understand the first sentence, above. She travels to the U.S. to curry favour with Trump toadies, oblivious to the fact she is dividing the Canadian front, and thereby assisting the narcissist-in-chief. Mr. Trump is a shameless, insatiable gangster, for whom too much is never enough. His actions toward Canada are a shakedown and a scurrilous insult, but Danielle Smith, ever the right-wing cheerleader and, thus, never a leader, can’t see it.

There is no short-term fix. Canada will suffer. Negotiating with Mr. Trump is like negotiating with a manic cannibal over exactly which parts of you he will remove and consume. There will be some hope only when Americans manage to Make America Sane Again, but, until then, only a united front among all 14 provincial, territorial and federal governments can make the best of our bad situation.

Gregory R. Côté, Irvine