It’s over. For now. Until he decides to hit us again. After a weekend of pain, Canada has 30 days before the United States decides if we’ve been good enough, or we deserve another beating. Tariffs? Takeover? Who knows what President Donald Trump has in store for us. But one thing is clear: we can never trust him again.
Under Trump, America has become the abusive boyfriend of nations. He’ll hit you to get what he wants. He’ll mock you and laugh when you cry. The mask is off, and the ugliness is on full display.
The best thing to do for Canada would be to leave. But we can’t; we cohabitate the same continent. We sleep next to him, every night. We depend on him to protect us from the bullies across the ocean. He buys our stuff. It’s a codependent relationship, so we’re stuck.
So what can we do? We can start by seeing other people. Nations who will treat us better, who will play fair. As in every unhealthy relationship, we stopped doing that; we stopped calling our friends, we spent way too much time with our guy. But it looked so good, who could blame us? We never saw this coming.
We must also learn to love ourselves. As a nation, that’s been lacking lately. We constantly run ourselves down. Our leadership hasn’t helped — for over a decade, we’ve been telling ourselves what a genocidal, racist, destructive country we are. Like we’ve never done anything good, like we didn’t die for freedom in two world wars, like we haven’t provided a peaceful haven for people fleeing conflict around the world, like we haven’t built a home where we care for each other, in two official languages, in many cultures, despite our differences, or perhaps because of them.
I’m not just talking about our leadership in Ottawa, either: I’m talking about it at every level of society. The teachers in your kid’s school, the artists in the local museum, the professors in academia, the activists online. They want to tear down and remake Canada. They call it decolonization, but it is really repudiation: repudiation of people and values they disagree with. It is divisive, it is angry, and it must stop.
The reality is Canada cannot be decolonized, because we are a nation of perpetual colonization. That is our identity. Every newcomer stakes a new claim. We are a nation defined by explorers, by fortune seekers, by immigration, by a constant influx of people seeking a better life for themselves and their children. And no one is going anywhere.
We must stop the psychoanalysis of our past and make plans to move forward, together. We need to give people a common base to build on, a set of norms and expectations of how we treat each other. How we share space with each other. And revel in the freedom, peace, order and good government we enjoy in this magnificent, wild, northern, bountiful land. Especially now that our very existence is threatened by the bully next door.
And there are concrete things we can do, now. We should drop our internal trade barriers and beef up our military. We should tackle the crime on our streets and our borders, not for Trump, but to keep our people safe. We should start a national campaign of patriotism, in schools, online, in the media. We should show America — and the world — that we are worthy of respect.
Of course, Trump doesn’t fully respect anyone. China’s tough; he hit them too. Not as hard — their tariffs are only 10 per cent — and they don’t have the same relationship. China wants to take the world for herself. That makes the country more attractive, less of a pushover.
But Canada? It’s time to stand tall, stand proud, and hit back.
Postmedia Network
Tasha Kheiriddin is Postmedia’s national politics columnist.