Suddenly, Canada is dealing with a powerful, unpredictable and potentially dangerous force — American hyper-patriotism.
We are expected to enthusiastically accept President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to turn us into a territory, state, client, superstore or some other handy American outlet.
Tuesday brought a shocking TV exchange between Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Fox host Jesse Watters.
Watters started off with a hurt and offended tone, asking Ford: “What’s your problem with the United States absorbing Canada?”
Ford declared his love for the U.S. He also said we aren’t for sale. When it comes to trade, he added that he wouldn’t want to sell our goods and resources to anybody but the beloved Americans.
Watters said, “You say this isn’t for sale, but everything has a price . . . can you think of this more as a merger instead of an acquisition?
“Don’t think about being taken over. Think about this as a coming together.”
Ford still failed to put hand to heart and sing The Star-Spangled Banner.
Watters suddenly escalated with breathtaking hostility: “You say that Americans don’t have a problem with Canadians, and we don’t, but it seems like you have a problem with us.
“Because if I were a citizen of another country and I was a neighbour of the United States, I would consider it a privilege to be taken over by the United States of America.
“That’s what everybody else in the world wants, American citizenship.
“For some reason, that’s repellent to you Canadians, and I find that personally offensive, premier.”
After a few more comments, Watters concluded: “Right, so this might just have to be a hostile takeover.”
Watters is a true Trump booster and an effective performer. Whether he means everything he says or not, he’s stoking a powerful feeling in America.
It goes back 200 years to Manifest Destiny, the doctrine that the U.S. is destined to include all of North America.
But here we are in Canada, still rolling along, largely unaware (until now) that we’ve always been the target of American expansionists.
Most of us who live in this great country are proud of our citizenship and have no desire to change. More than 80 per cent agree.
We’re also very good neighbours. Right now, Canadian water bombers are helping with the California wildfires.
Canada is home to thousands of joint Canada-U.S. citizens, but also some former Americans who relinquished their U.S. citizenship in favour of Canadian.
That’s a complicated and expensive process. To go through it, a person has to really, truly not want to be American any longer.
And yet, the fixed view of many Americans is that theirs is the greatest country by far and everybody else wants in.
I ran into American hyper-patriotism in its rawest form during the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games in 2010.
A sports writer from Texas wrote that the large and noisy pro-Canada crowds put him in mind of the Nazi Nuremberg rallies.
We got into an online dispute. I told him the Nuremberg reference was deeply offensive and said that if American fans behaved exactly the same way in, say, Dallas, he’d find it perfectly normal.
His problem was that he didn’t expect or understand such enthusiastic patriotism in another country.
All this was a revelation to the writer, a genial fellow who saw the point and apologized.
Trump’s view on taking over Canada isn’t universally popular in the U.S., of course.
We are not Panama or Greenland. Canada is the second largest country on Earth.
Gobbling us up would be enormously complicated. Quebec would go wild, just for starters.
Maybe it’s time for our leaders to change strategy. They should start focusing on the problems rather than gushing about our vast wealth and declaring their adoration for America.
Influential Americans such as Jesse Watters hear all that and think — they love us, they’ve got great stuff, we’ll take it.
Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald
X: @DonBraid