Ever since the federal Liberals’ poll numbers began cratering in earnest, in mid-summer last year, pundits and commentators have been seized with the question of what might somehow save Justin Trudeau and his wedding party from ignominious defeat. One idea always makes the (rather short) list. It goes like this: Donald Trump retakes the White House and unleashes pandemonium; Canadians detect a similar risk with Pierre Poilievre; they remember the Liberals doing a decent job handling the first Trump administration; and they decide to stick with the devil they know.
Stranger things have happened. But political narratives often look weaker in the harsh light of real life than they do on paper, and this is a great example. Indeed, from a strategic point of view, I see far more for Poilievre to gain here than for Trudeau.
It’s not 2016 anymore. The Trump and Trudeau government agendas first collided when both sides were full of vinegar. Trudeau and his senior staff, notably Gerald Butts and Katie Telford, seemed to relish the challenge of currying favour in the Trump White House — and with a comfortable majority in the House of Commons, they had the time to devote to it.
Team Trudeau developed very useful relationships with Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, in particular. It was Kushner who reportedly convinced his father-in-law to renegotiate NAFTA rather than simply heave it into the Oval Office fireplace.
Not to say that there’s no one in Trump’s second White House that Canada can work with. (Trump’s current “trade czar,” Robert Lightizer, was U.S. Trade Representative in Trump’s first administration.) But Kushner will reportedly only play an “outside advisor” role this time around, on the Middle East specifically. Ivanka Trump hasn’t been seen much at all lately.
But as Tristin Hopper noted in Monday’s First Reading newsletter, Trudeau and Canada seem to be far more top of mind to Trump’s second cabinet than to his first. To some of them, Trudeau has come to emblemize everything that’s wrong with modern western society.
Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s incoming director of national intelligence, posted a nearly eight-minute video last year about Trudeau’s and President Joe Biden’s stewardship of their respective countries. It began as follows: “Just when we think that it is impossible for our leaders to show any more hypocrisy and insanity and disregard for our fundamental God-given rights and freedoms, they surprise us yet again.”
https://x.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1621832525973975042
Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan, is an upstate New Yorker who sees the country’s northern border as an “extreme national-security vulnerability.” He has also very succinctly described Trudeau as “terrible.”
“(Poilievre) is going to send Trudeau packing in 2025 (finally) and start digging Canada out of the progressive mess it’s in,” incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz tweeted earlier this year.
https://x.com/michaelgwaltz/status/1796623353463164993
“I can … feel the socialist repression from here,” incoming attorney general Matt Gaetz remarked at an event in Detroit, referring to Canada.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s incoming Health Secretary, was a big supporter of the Freedom Convoy.
And then there is the small matter of the Liberals spending the last eight years comparing everything they don’t like — Poilievre, Doug Ford, Danielle Smith, black flies, overcooked eggs — to Trump. If Trump didn’t notice that, it seems likely someone in his new cabinet will flag it for him.
The far more likely narrative, it seems to me, is that the more chaotic Trump’s second term is, the more it might actually reflect well on Poilievre. Especially considering how much American news Canadians consume, it might demonstrate simply by osmosis that Poilievre isn’t really anything like Trump at all. (It doesn’t hurt that Conservative MP Jamil Jivani is friendlier with Vice President-elect J.D. Vance — they met at Yale law school — than any Liberal MP can likely claim of an incoming Trump cabinet minister.)
If Poilievre used this as an opportunity to dial down the glibness a few notches and articulate a vision or strategy for Canada’s most important file, it could be an even bigger positive. He broached the subject in a recent interview with Vancouver radio station CKNW, offering a mixture of bluster (“we’ll fight fire with fire”), blaming Trudeau for bad trade deals, and a sort of friendly realpolitik.
“We live next door to the biggest economic and military superpower the world has ever seen. Trump wants what’s best for American workers. I want what’s best for Canadian workers,” he said. “Trump would love nothing more to keep than keep Trudeau in power because he can walk all over him, and he can take his money.”
No doubt many pundits will cringe at this tough talk. Maybe they’re right to. In the short to medium term, a prime minister Pierre Poilievre won’t likely have compelling solutions to offer Washington on top-of-mind files like border security and military spending.
But from a domestic point of view, there is no logical reason Tump’s re-election ought to benefit the Liberals. The biggest threat to Canada from Washington is unpredictability and chaos, neither of which we’re well-equipped to handle. But the Liberals have ushered in plenty of their own brand of chaos. Just look at immigration — one of Team Trump’s leading preoccupations. As horrified as many Canadians are by Trump’s plans for mass deportations, Trudeau’s government so comprehensively botched that file that 1.2 million people are just supposed to leave Canada by 2025.
If anyone looks better than anyone else at this point, it sure isn’t Team Trudeau.
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