WE’RE NOT YOUR BEST DEAL, MR TRUMP

WE’RE NOT YOUR BEST DEAL, MR TRUMP

In the spir­it of good neigh­bourli­ness, I would like to take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to cau­tion U.S. Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump that his “great idea!!!” of mak­ing Cana­da the “51st state” isn’t  even a good idea, because, frankly sir, we’d be more trou­ble than we’re worth.

The “Truth Social” post in which you claimed “Many Cana­di­ans” (how many is many?) want to be absorbed into what you call “Amer­i­ca” includ­ed: “No one can answer why we sub­si­dize Cana­da to the tune of over $100,000,000 a year?” 
Is that an asser­tion or a ques­tion? If it’s a true state­ment, in 2025 please send my share as a cashier’s cheque.
Your post also promised we would “…save mas­sive­ly on tax­es and mil­i­tary protection.”
Cana­di­ans (jus­ti­fi­ably) bitch about tax­es so often it qual­i­fies as a nation­al ner­vous tic. Your tax cuts are only for the mega-rich, how­ev­er, and so few of us fit that cat­e­go­ry, the rest of us would bitch you to ner­vous break­down level.

As for “mili­tary pro­tec­tion”, the only nation that has ever tried to invade Cana­da is the U.S., which Thomas Jef­fer­son said would entail  “a mere mat­ter of marching.”
As we delight in point­ing out when­ev­er pos­si­ble, the “march­ing” end­ed up being why our mutu­al 5,5625 mile bor­der is where it is, and the White House is white. (See: War of 1812–14).

                         MANNERS VS MUSCLE

If you still think we’re wimps, bear in mind our nation­al sport is hock­ey, in which the unwrit­ten rule is that when you fight for the puck in the cor­ner, elbows come out.
That explains why Ontario Pre­mier (that’s what we call our equiv­a­lent of your gov­er­nors, by the way) Doug Ford react­ed to your threat of 25 per­cent tar­iffs by sug­gest­ing that his province, which pro­vides ener­gy to sev­er­al bor­der states, could “turn off the lights” for 1.5 mil­lion Amer­i­can households.
It’s hard­ly a polite rejoin­der, which is one of sev­er­al rea­sons why it won’t hap­pen, although it does have a cer­tain vis­cer­al  appeal.
You wouldn’t like our pas­sive-aggres­sive adroit­ness either. For exam­ple, when then Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon called then Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Pierre Trudeau an “ass­hole”, our cur­rent Cana­di­an PM Justin’s father replied: “I’ve been called worse things by bet­ter people.”
We’ve got our share of ill-informed. ill-man­nered, rau­cous, wingnut vot­ers, too. But we only tol­er­ate them if they obey the law.

Does that strike an omi­nous chord?
Some com­men­ta­tors have sug­gest­ed you’re find­ing it amus­ing to try to con­tribute to replac­ing Lib­er­al left-winger Justin with right-wing Con­ser­v­a­tive leader Pierre Poilievre as what you called Canada’s “Gov­er­nor”. (We call that “polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence in our demo­c­ra­t­ic process”, by the way.)
Any­way, you don’t have to bother.
Trudeau will be out on his ear if not before, then cer­tain­ly when his cur­rent term expires. That’s not just because he deserves to go (which he does ), or we all adore Poilievre (which we don’t),
The Cana­di­an elec­torate tend to replace the rul­ing par­ty every few terms as a mat­ter of course. It’s our demo­c­ra­t­ic way of keep­ing them from get­ting too cocky and think­ing they can get away with ignor­ing our day-to-day con­cerns if it suits their par­ty agenda.
I seri­ous­ly doubt your col­lec­tion of true believ­ers and fawn­ing, spine­less toad­ies in Con­gress would appre­ci­ate that kind of atti­tude being annexed into your ver­sion of democracy.
We’d also have a hard time fit­ting in.
For instance, as bad­ly as our uni­ver­sal health care sys­tem needs revamp­ing, we wouldn’t hap­pi­ly swap it for what a for­mer Amer­i­can health insur­ance behe­moth spokesman described as “the uncom­fort­able truth” that in the U.S. heath insur­ance sys­tem, “share­hold­ers, not patient out­comes, tend to dri­ve deci­sions at for-prof­it health insur­ance companies.”

                         VALUE FOR MONEY

Cana­di­ans are used to elec­tion cam­paigns that last a month or so at most, under laws that restrict indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions to par­ties, can­di­dates and lead­ers to $1,750 (approx. U.S.$1,400).
That doesn’t mean we don’t end up with occa­sion­al cor­rup­tion. char­la­tans and wastes of space in Parliament.
But, among oth­er eth­i­cal ben­e­fits, it frees leg­is­la­tors from the threats and rav­ings of ado­les­cent devel­op­ment lev­el bil­lion­aires like Elon Musk, “bound­ing in and out of meet­ings, sit­ting in on phone calls, weigh­ing résumés and trav­el­ing to Wash­ing­ton as Trump’s unof­fi­cial co-president.”
Do you real­ly want to let our kind of ethos slip into your sys­tem, Mr Trump?

As far as I know, no Cana­di­an polit­i­cal fig­ure or office-seek­er has described this coun­try as “a dis­as­ter”, or a“s***hole”,  and what is hap­pen­ing in it “dis­gust­ing”, all of which you have rou­tine­ly applied to your nation.
How­ev­er, Cana­da was num­ber five in a recent list of the top coun­tries in the world for qual­i­ty of life. The U.S. ranked 22nd.

So, flat­ter­ing though it is to be invit­ed to help on your quest to MAGA, I think we’ll take fifth place over being your “51st state”.
It’ll be bet­ter for both our sakes. Really.
Sor­ry, eh?

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8 thoughts on “WE’RE NOT YOUR BEST DEAL, MR TRUMP

  1. First­ly, as you point out, buy­ing prod­ucts is not a sub­sidy. Sec­ond­ly, Cana­da, as a US state would dwarf all 50 oth­ers com­bined and Don­ald Trump does­n’t like being dwarfed. Third­ly, Cana­di­ans would tilt the US polit­i­cal bal­ance left, some­thing else he does­n’t like. What he’d actu­al­ly like is Alber­ta and he’s probing.

  2. full dis­clo­sure…
    i have a friend who has an uncle whose nephew
    works at mar-a-lago…aka musk-a-lago…
    he reports the annex­a­tion move is in full force…
    it began when trump was told that mela­nia said
    young trudeau was “cute” and had good hair…
    well, off with his well-coiffed head then…
    trump is very upset because Cana­di­ans are known for being friend­ly and good-natured…
    these are char­ac­ter­is­tics of weak­ness in
    trumplandia…
    he does­n’t under­stand his neigh­bor’s aversion
    to vio­lence, par­tic­u­lar­ly the polit­i­cal kind…
    he likes the idea of a nation that stretch­es far
    beyond “sea to shin­ing sea” and instead runs
    from Nome to Key West…
    Don Junior says MAGA means My Annexation
    Grows America…
    and co-pres­i­dent musk is push­ing Ronald McDon­ald as Nutri­tion Czar, he has been heard
    ask­ing “who the hell is this Tim Hor­ton guy?…
    beware the creep of Trump…yes, seal the bor­ders to keep his legions out…

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