John Rustad has suggested that Donald Trump's threats to impose tariffs and annex territory could have a "silver lining" for Canada.The BC Conservative leader expressed his hope that the attack will unite Canadians and restore our national pride."I'm assuming he's joking when he says we could become the 51st state, because quite frankly I have no interest whatsoever in being American," Rustad told the Western Standard, "but in many ways that might actually provide us with the impetus in Canada to start thinking about ourselves as a nation."He pointed out that under the current regulations, it's easier for British Columbia to trade with the United States than it is to trade amongst provinces, citing a National Bank report that found trade barriers between British Columbia and other provinces resulted in the equivalent of a 23% tariff."We need to create a Canada-wide free-trade agreement," Rustad continued. "We need to be working on making sure our resources — including oil and gas — can flow back and forth across the provinces." He went on to argue that Canadians "need to actually have a sense of who we are as a nation," positing that, "maybe, maybe these threats and bluster from Donald Trump will get us thinking like a nation and trying to address some of these issues.""There are many many things that make us Canadian," Rustad said. "The fact that we're a melting pot of different cultures, and languages, and religions, and values — that's who we are as Canadians, and we should be very proud of all our backgrounds and differences."He lamented that after decades of being "the solution looking for a problem," Canada had, via "poor leadership at multiple levels," found a problem."We have to move beyond that," Rustad said. "You look at all the resources that we have, all the potential that we have as a nation, we could be one of the wealthiest nations in the world, we could have one of the highest standards of health care and quality of life anywhere, but we're hopelessly managed."He said it was as if Canadians had become "embarrassed by the potential that we have."
