The only person who doesn’t believe the Great White North is not for sale appears to be President Donald J. Trump, who doesn’t seem to want to take no for an answer.
Even though he keeps saying there’s nothing Canada has that America needs, it’s obvious Trump wants what the country has and he wants it bad.
Lower taxes, better health care, stronger military, new icebreakers and no 25% tariff is what he was trying to woo Canadians with Friday. In his hitting on hosers to join their union, the sweet-talking president, thankfully, didn’t offer more American beer. If he throws in a Stanley Cup, Canadians may be more receptive. But this guy has a crush on Canada and is pursuing it with the same passion he did on his political comeback.
“I would love to see Canada be the 51st state,” Trump told reporters in North Carolina Friday. “The Canadian citizens, if that happened, would get a very big tax cut – a tremendous tax cut – because they are very highly taxed.”
But paying less taxes he suggested Canadians would “have much better health coverage. I think the people of Canada would like it.”
Of course, while he claims a $200-billion trade deficit with Canada, Trump didn’t mention anything about some people state-side, who can’t pay their medical bills and have to sell their homes to cover their bills.
Or just the enormous cost of health coverage in general.
Last winter, Richard Bishop, from the Windsor area, learned this after suffering a heart attack at a Florida airport. American medicine saved his life but also sent him a bill for $620,000, which his insurance originally refused to pay but eventually did thanks to the great Pat Foran at CTV News going to bat for him.
But had Bishop had that heart attack in his home town of Tecumseh, there would have been no bill sent to him. Meanwhile, $80,000 of that whopping American bill, Bishop told CTV, was just for the defibrillator to get his heart started again.
Perhaps somebody should ask Trump the question that none of our leaders have asked the 47th President or Americans yet.
Does the United States want to become Canada’s 11th province?
We may not have won a Stanley Cup in 32 years and we pay too much in taxes, but our beer is better, our oil is ethical and it’s sold exclusively to the United States at a discount.
And most Canadians have never seen an icebreaker let alone conjured up any worry of ever needing the services of one. Plus, Canadians don’t have to be rich to get cancer treatment.
But Trump’s having a blast doing his ‘Art of the Deal’ trolling of Justin Trudeau who he calls “governor” while the lame duck Prime Minister’s cabinet with no real mandate head to Washington to grovel. Not since the 1980 and 1995 Quebec separation referendums has Canada’s future been is unsure.
And Trudeau is to blame. He caused this crisis, starting in 2015 when he told the New York Times “there is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada” but “there are shared values – openness, respect, compassion, willingness to work hard, to be there for each other, to search for equality and justice. Those qualities are what make us the first post-national state.”
Soon after Canada’s first prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald’s likeness was taken off of the $10 bill, his statues were toppled from many cities, including his home town Kingston, and in 2017 Trudeau would say, “Anytime I meet people who got to make the deliberate choice, whose parents chose Canada, I’m jealous because I think being able to choose it, rather than being Canadian by default, is an amazing statement of attachment to Canada.”
Canadians don’t even know what the country is anymore!
And now along comes Trump, who has not forgiven Trudeau for mocking him at a 2019 NATO meeting, on a mission to short Canada and to steal it at a discount. Trump is seizing on Canada with promised “economic force” from the U.S. it could face a depression very soon.
Trump wants Ontario’s manufacturing jobs for the seven swing states that gave him the presidency, Alberta’s oil industry, Saskatchewan’s rich agriculture and resources, and Manitoba’s access to Hudson Bay, which could be a port used to ship oil to Greenland and on to Europe.
Who knows where this all goes? Time will tell.
But when you have an American president repeatedly talking about acquiring you, what is needed is a federal election so people can choose who they want to deal with Trump and to try to stop Canada from being swallowed up by him.
And they need that election fast.