“I started a joke that started the whole world crying”. The BeeGees

Hands up all those who had Canada, Greenland and Panama as a parlay on their cards. No? Not shocked. We are at the start of a new U.S. foreign policy doctrine, and it has many in Canada panicking.

There have been famous doctrines over the years governing U.S. foreign policy. The Monroe Doctrine. The Truman Doctrine. The Reagan Doctrine. Now we have the Trump “You Snooze You Lose” Doctrine. The past and future POTUS  articulated this realpolitik in the weeks following his election. Tariffs on Canada. Border control. No foreign entanglements. It’s become obvious in the past week that his most vulnerable target would be dozing self-congratulatory postmodern Trudeaupia.

Which has now, suddenly, awoken to its jeopardy. Yes, the nation that lowered flags claiming it’s a genocidal culture, removed national symbols, ignored the PM dressing as Sinbad, locked down tighter than a gnat’s ass for Covid and threatened truckers with loss of jobs and income for not taking an experimental vaccine— these people who elected Trudeau three times as PM wonder why Trump has no respect for Canada

During Tuesday’s extensive presser Trump said he liked Canadians but summed up their weakness. “Canada is subsidized (by the U.S.) to the tune of about $200 billion a year, plus other things. And they don’t essentially have a military. They have a very small military. They rely on our military. It’s all fine, but you know they gotta pay for that.” The question is how much of Canada’s sovereignty will be sacrificed in this accounting?

In their alarm the maple leaf brigade forgets that, with the Apprentice star, it’s nothing personal. He loves to make deals. He likes to mock his opponents. And he likes to win. (After he beats you he shakes your hand and invites you to Mar A Lago.) Like a good poker player he looks for weakness to exploit. And in the Canada of Justin Trudeau he saw weakness everywhere. To paraphrase the Donald, the most weak weakness in the history of the world. Trump seasoned his jibes by proposing hockey star Wayne Gretzky to be governor of a 51st state (Gretzky demurred).

None of this is new. The imbalance between Canada and the U.S. has been longstanding. In July of 2018 we wrote “Sometimes An Ingrate Nation: Bitching About A Free Tab On America’s Bill”. We noted, “Canadians miffed with President Trump’s bracing assessment of Canadians as partners have decided that they will boycott America. Perhaps they are forgetting how lucky they are.”

The boycott fizzled, and it was business as usual. Luckily for slack Canadians no one in the Biden United States was willing to pursue the freeloader status of Canada. Too polite? Too preoccupied? Doesn’t matter now. Trump noticed. Much of what followed is bluff, like a poker player. But it hit a nerve.

When the notion of putting 25 percent tariffs on Canada was first broached there was brave talk of retaliation. Led by the dubious dauphin Trudeau humourless suits blustered about striking back. Instead of simply addressing the border issue Trump identified, Canadians vowed instead not to travel south again, to boycott American goods, denying the U.S. the CDN strategic maple sugar reserve.

Bad idea. A re-focussed Trump is now talking more seriously about a 51st state, an open border, a blended economy (an idea promoted by Canada’s Kevin O’Leary in his chats with GOP grandees). Sometimes it’s lighthearted. Tuesday it was not. He wants Canada to take border security seriously. He wants Canadians to pay for it. There is enough truth to Canada’s indentured state that hosers everywhere now realize their vulnerability under Trudeau’s progressive regime.

Because they fear Trump, Canada’s progressive howler monkeys instead beat up on Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, the presumptive PM. They call him a mini Trump and other things they’re too cowardly to hurl at Trump directly. Ottawa’s purchased media whine that PP won’t constantly stick his foot in his mouth like their beloved Elizabeth May, giving them lots of columns and panel topics.

It didn’t fool anyone. The Trudeau time line to hang on as PM till October was destroyed by Trump’s mockery about a 51st state. Trump’s agitation made it obvious that Canada could not trust Trudeau to negotiate with POTUS 45/ 47.  With PMJT absent, premiers like Doug Ford (Ontario) and Danielle Smith (Alberta) went around Surfer Boy to appeal to Americans for mercy.

Trudeau— who’d routinely maligned Trump for a decade— made himself the victim of the play, scuttling off to his governor general for a perogy prorogation. Now we have PMJT offering to resign, but only after playing parliamentary peekaboo into the summer. Leaving Canada in the lurch while Liberals leisurely solve their Trudeau problem.

How seriously should Canada’s fainting goats take Trump’s agenda? After all he’s putting the full-court press on Greenland, Panama and the Gulf of Mexico/ America, too. Canadians should first understand that most of this thrust is for his domestic consumption. Facing the remnants of the lengthy lawfare campaign against him and having just one term to work within he’s cognizant of keeping Americans happy.

Those who recall the president before Mr. Senile will remember that Trump shoots high to settle lower on the expectation scale. He wants Canada’s resources, not freeloaders like Jagmeet Singh. Plus he needs an outlet in the eastern Arctic. And freer markets for America’s producers.

When the Gretzky jokes and Trudeau jabs subside there will be still be the matter of Canada paying more when federal governments have frittered away a legacy on vanity climate projects and healthcare that doesn’t work. If Trump offers Canada a way out of that bind there might be something new under the northern sun.

It won’t come without strings. He’ll say, “You’re broke, but maybe can work something out”. At which point Canadians will best summed be up by another BeeGees tearjerker, “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?”

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

How shall we describe 2024, the year just past? How about the Year the Fever Broke?

Entering 2024 the Western world was still under the social contagion launched by the election of Barack Obama as president of the U.S. Since 2008, when the African/Hawaiian become the first black president and the Nobel committee gave him the peace prize for his pigmentation, a fever of progressivism came over the institutions of the West. Woke World became your world.

Observes @feelsdesperate: “The big lib project, from Obama on… would partner with NGOs, media, and academia to create a new liberal economic order legitimized by the continuous generation of *Progress* (i.e. institutionally approved identity-narcissism and new liberatory adventures) while civil liberties… were continuously undermined.”

By January of 2024 the fever still raged in the body politic. “Instead of Obama’s virtuous rhetoric from 2008 they’re now in a far darker place. They are joined to the civilizational suicide of White Fragility promoter Robin DiAngelo. Or Ibrahim X. Kenji’s bilious racism. Or Hamas’ death cult. With no escape.”

Appropriately this fever had been spread by a Chinese-produced virus which, for almost three years, subdued the citizenry, suspended civil rights and forced many to die lonely deaths in the ICU. A dubious vaccine, forced on people who didn’t need it, harmed as many as it helped. As we wrote our 2024 look-forward, the spreading contagion carried fashionable labels. DEI, ESG, BLM, LGBTQ and IPCC. It demanded the deconstruction of pronouns, gender, energy, immigration, meritocracy. Science became settled. Men could have babies. Children could decide gender. White people were Nazis. The expert class was omnipotent.

In this cultural hallucination Hollywood figures were thrust into leadership positions (George Clooney, Will Ferrell, the cast of The View). Blue-check Disney was destroying classic films with Woke updates. Jay-Z and Diddy were black cultural icons. The demented Joe Biden was aimed toward a second term as POTUS.  Greta Thunberg was still a media go-to on climate. The Ukrainians were dutifully being slaughtered to protect the natural gas interests of the West.

Elon Musk was an upstart dictator about to bankrupt Twitter. Heroes were to be prosecuted . And Trump was yesterday’s man.

In Canada, virtue— slavishly supporting radical positions aimed at destroying western society— was all. The douche dauphin Justin Trudeau, held an iron grip on the PMO, ergo he controlled the nation’s politics. Quebec was still getting its usual billions in equalization from ROC. The Indigenous were entitled to claim Crown lands for the alleged sins of the past . The most noble position one could aspire to was having your eight-year-old chemically or physically castrated to satisfy the whims of teachers’ unions and mid-level bureaucrats.  .

It was worth your life to speak up against this corrupt ruling class. In Canada you were a racist/ fascist for supporting the Conservatives but praised for loving China. In England they put citizens in jail for Facebook tweets that offended protected groups. Saying you’d vote for Donald Trump again as president was tantamount to expulsion from social media.

Legacy media still ruled these narratives, even though they’d lost half their audience. (In Canada that was more like 75 percent of its audience.)

Then, as 2024 progressed, something remarkable happened. Almost as one, it occurred to the hapless middle class that they were the victims of an enormous practical joke fostered by the Marxist shills of “NGOs, media, and academia”. What caused the shift? Largely fatigue with people you wouldn’t hire to clean your pool. Aggravation with woke marketing. Discovering political insiders were suddenly obscenely rich.

Whatever the reason, the Fever broke. A new consensus saw the unrepentant Trudeau was an empty suit determined to achieve destruction of the Liberal party. And, with the NDP, to take down Canada. The fainting goats of elite Ottawa recognized with a start that their Trudeau lassitude the past decade had left the country wide open to outside forces such as Trump’s tariff threats.

By the end of 2024 it was clear that letting another nation pay for your defence was abdicating your sovereignty. That allowing a porous border and foreign money-laundering was bound to get you discovered. That unlimited social experimentation sapped a culture’s resistance. Trump certainly noticed.

Certain things became clear. Canada could not win a tariff war with Trump. Quebec understood that if swallowed by America their precious culture will be reduced to Louisiana with poutine. That a 50-cent dollar made Canada a third-world economy. No wonder Kevin O’Leary talked of economic merger with the U.S. The other options are going, going and gone.

South of the border the Fever broke harder. Biden was revealed to be non compus mentus, not “sharp as a tack” per the Left media. Someone else— no one knew who— was running the government. They noticed that Trump may be batshit crazy, but that wanting him dead seemed a tad excessive. That re-working every commercial or TV cast to represent 70-80 percent blue-check priorities was obnoxious to both traditional audiences and the groups it sough to promote.

That all the trillions spent so far on climate mediation hadn’t cleaned the air or water but had certainly enriched the political elite. That Ukraine was about natural gas, not Russian imperialism. That RFK, the iconoclast son of a Democratic dynasty, had made common cause with both Trump and Musk

Panicky progressives and their media shills sought to keep the fever alive. Sensing Trump might actually win re-election Obama induced Clooney to front a coup to replace Biden— who’d soiled himself in a June debate— with a fatuous black/ Indian woman who spent high school in Montreal. It worked about as well as you could have predicted.

Which was when “unknown parties” tried to assassinate Trump. Twice. They also produced a progression of fake polls that showed Kamala ahead of Trump when she was nowhere close. In short, they spent all their credibility on losing propositions, and now… heeere’s Donald!

Trump/ Trudeau is a fever all its own. Canadians fed a diet of MSNBC eye-rollers think it’s the end of our culture. Whether it’s better or worse we will find out in the next 12 months. But the reason Trump is here is that your friends who spread the Fever can no longer be trusted. Turning off the porch light doesn’t convince the dangerous opportunists not to ring your door bell.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.