It says something about our politics, perhaps – and it certainly says something about us, as a people – when the simple wearing of a trucker’s cap can cause a sensation.
CANADA IS NOT FOR SALE, the words on the cap declared. Beneath it, a steely-eyed Ontario Premier Doug Ford looked out at the assembled cameras at Wednesday’s First Ministers gathering in Ottawa, and he wasn’t smiling.
And, really, who can blame him? There’s not much to smile about, these days.
The president-elect of the United States of America has said he was going to use force against us. That he wants to take us over. That we have nothing to offer the world. That he doesn’t care what our leaders have to say, on the Left or Right. That he’s going to tank our economy with a 25% tariff. He’s even published maps, like Hamas does with Israel, showing Canada completely gone.
So, as my colleague Bryan Passifiume reported on Wednesday, Ford’s hat – blue, with a Canadian flag on one side and “1867” on the other – caused “a sensation.”
Everyone – no exaggeration – expressed admiration verging on adoration for Ford. Everyone immediately wanted to know where to get one of those hats, too. (So many tried, in fact, the website belonging to Ottawa’s Jackpine Dynamic Branding reportedly crashed.)
How does that happen, when five simple words on a hat can capture the mood of a country? It happens, per Simon and Garfunkel, when a worried nation turns its eyes to Ottawa – and sees nothing. No leadership, no vision. Nothing.
As the news of Doug Ford’s hat-wearing broke, I was on a TV set with another colleague, Brian Lilley. Historian Conrad Black was with us, albeit remotely, and the subject matter was what Canada should do about Trump’s threats. Pick up a musket? Write a stern letter? Sell it all off for a few greenbacks?
Lilley made an important point. Trump’s ravings all felt like a joke at the start, he said, but they don’t feel very jokey anymore. Black, who told us he considers Trump a friend, conceded that his friend’s rhetoric was a bit over-the-top, but he insisted that Trump is not serious.
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Me, the panel’s card-carrying Trump-hater, had a different view (of course). Everyone from Stephen Harper to Jean Chretien had been utterly appalled by Trump’s attacks on us, I said. Everyone had been relieved to see Doug Ford assume the mantle of Captain Canada and fight back, I said. Those things matter.
And, I said, shrugging about Trump’s threats – and hoping that he’s joking – isn’t a very good strategy. It’s capitulation.
Supportive noises were made about Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, the Neville Chamberlain of Confederation. I, again, was the dissident. Right out of the gate, Smith parroted every bit of nonsense that issued from Trump’s sphincter. And, in so doing, she put Canada last.
What should we do? Plenty, short-term and long-term.
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Short-term, we need to set aside partisan differences and fashion the sort of Team Canada approach my former boss Chretien devised in the 1990s. Everyone needs to be singing from the same hymn book, all over the American networks. And our retaliatory tariffs need to be immediate and just as punishing as the ones we are responding to.
Long-term, we need to accept that America – for the next four years, at least – is no longer our closest and best ally. We need to expand trade relations with the European Union. We need to accept that NATO is dead or dying – Trump’s military threats against fellow NATO members makes that clear – and work on fashioning a new Western military alliance. (And it should include Israel.)
Most of all, we need to accept that everything has changed. We need to accept that Trump says what he means, and means what he says, and get ready.
And, we should all get one of those hats. Let’s have a rally in front of the American Embassy in Ottawa, and we’ll wear our hats.
And we’ll tell Trump we’re not for sale.