Keeping Canada separate from our neighbour

The U.S. sneezes and Canada catches a cold.

It’s a common aphorism some use to describe our largely reactionary relationship with the superpower south of our border. It can be used to describe the nature of our traditionally parallel economic endeavours, which lead us to share their fate in the marketplace. Or how our symbiotic cultural dynamic leads us to adopt their trends. Or it can be used to describe how our political climate often follows their lead, just a few steps behind.

So what about when America isn’t just sneezing, but appears to be infested with a zombie fungal infection so dire it might lead one writer to craft atrocious wordplay like “The Last of US?”

It is long past debatable that U.S. Present Donald Trump will not be governing under any of the restraints he operated under in his first administration. The grown-ups in the room have been replaced by grovelling sycophants who spout juvenile lies to stroke his ego. Like when Pam Bondi recently congratulated Trump that his border policy had been so successful in stopping the flow of fentanyl that it had already saved 258 million lives. I hope nobody needs the math done for them to see how ludicrous that is.

This Orwellian level of propaganda is occurring alongside a descent into martial law, where peaceful protest is met with the most brutal of crackdowns. International students are being advised to scrub their political writings from the public record because the administration is using any instances of political dissent as an excuse to strip them of their visas and deport them. And speaking of deportations, ICE has been doing things like busting up elementary school graduation ceremonies and abducting attendees for detainment, in many cases scooping up people who are not even eligible for deportation, simply as a tool for terror.

And Dear Leader wanted a big military parade on his birthday. The United States has become the cartoonish caricature of a despotic state they have always accused North Korea of being.

So what is Canada’s response? Well, it’s been a mixed bag. Thankfully Trump’s direct assault of tariffs served as a wake-up call that we need to disentangle ourselves from our chaotic neighbours economically. And sure, we have put our elbows up and bought Canadian. But we aren’t just doing it to score points in a trade war. I think for many of us, we are saying we see what is happening south of the border and we reject it — that this is a time for us to firmly stand separate from the U.S.

But have our leaders heard us?

Judging by the recent Bill C-2 put forward by the Mark Carney Liberals, it seems like they have taken the election results, which were a clear repudiation of contemporary right-wing politics, and somehow interpreted that as a mandate to govern like Stephen Harper 2.0. As the U.S. brutally cracks down on immigrants and refugees, Carney has decided to follow suit, introducing measures that will make it more difficult for even the most imperiled people seeking asylum. Like how a person will no longer be eligible to seek asylum if they even visited Canada in the past if it took place more than a year before their claim. Or how we will now be deporting people directly back to the very country they are fleeing from, even if their lives are in danger there, without offering them so much as a hearing.

These are traditional policies of Western chauvinism and not how we invigorate a new Canadian era. Not that Carney appears interested in such a path anyway. Since his initial tough talk, he has seemed more interested in cosying back up to the president. But a word to the wise, Mr. Prime Minister. If you believe you can game out a mutually beneficial relationship of equals with Trump, you would be a fool.

A more local disappointment in this vein has been the recent pivot of Premier Wab Kinew and his warming to the idea of pipelines. Despite being another beneficiary of an electoral rejection of conservative politics, this is a frustrating, but historically unsurprising, pivot towards the right by a supposedly progressive leader.

“When the facts change … you change your opinion on something,” Kinew rationalized, referencing that we need to broaden our economic horizons due to the trade war with the U.S.

But the facts haven’t changed. Our failure to pivot away from fossil fuels continues to borrow on the quality of life in the future, as highlighted in every new report climatologists offer us. Yet we blissfully fail to meet even the barest of our emissions quotas. Trump sowing economic chaos cannot be used as an excuse to resort to the economic expediency of environmental degradation, which should be obvious as we cope with extreme conditions like those which have set our province ablaze this summer.

Our leaders have confused reverting to the status quo for seeking stability. But that status quo is full of policies which strip human beings of their dignity and extract profit for shareholders at the cost of environmental security. People are sick enough of the status quo that they are ready to embrace extremes, such as those we see in the south. And it’s time our politicians realize that if they won’t lead us somewhere new, then that is ultimately where they will take us.

Alex Passey is a Winnipeg author.