COOPER: A very Laurentian way of looking at Trump's tariff war

The current dispute with the Americans is not an instance of a clash of civilizations. But judging from the response of the Laurentian media, you might be forgiven for thinking differently. The latest version of Laurentian panic takes the form of a strange call for “national unity.” For a couple of generations, “national unity” has been a coded message from the Laurentians to the rest of us. It means “shut up and do what we say.”Two items on the National Post on Wednesday last carried the same predictable instructions.In the first, “Canadian media leaders” called on Ottawa to “preserve Canadian unity and culture through the protection of its media.” The first source quoted was the “Canadian Local Media Coalition,” which simply wanted to siphon advertising revenue from Google and Meta. Then came Postmedia president Andrew MacLeod who wanted to siphon advertising revenue from Google and Meta. Notice a pattern here?Then, there was Louis Audet, chairman of Cogeco, a Montreal media company who complained of Ottawa’s inaction. “It’s a mystery to me,” he said. “What we’re talking about is preserving Canadian unity and culture through the protection of its media that allow people to speak to each other from one end of the country to the other, that allow elected officials to speak to their constituents and vice versa.” This echo of the Local Media Coalition also reminds us of the founding legend of CBC, that they are necessary for Canadians to tell themselves their own stories. Oh yes, Audet wanted more advertising revenue as well.The second source was Tasha Kheiriddin, a notionally conservative columnist, who was born in Montreal and now works in Toronto.What should Ottawa do? she asks. “I’ve got a few ideas,” she answers, “but I will start with the most radical: form a national unity government” The model, she said, was set by Robert Borden in 1917. This analogy, it seems to me, is ridiculous, but here is her justification.The most important implication of a national unity government is that an immediate election is not necessary because the new prime minister, in her opinion, Mark Carney, would offer cabinet posts to Pierre Poilievre, Jagmeet Singh, and Yves-Francoise Blanchet in exchange for a pledge not to defeat the government until October, by which time, apparently, the “crisis” would be over.This would be “true leadership” for all concerned and would be especially clever for the Liberals. If the opposition parties didn’t accept the deal, they could be blamed for forcing an election. If they did accept the deal, the Liberals would have dodged a bullet, namely their defeat.Then what? She advocated the usual nostrums that have been put out there for months — years in fact! Eliminate internal trade barriers, cut taxes, develop a homebuilding and military procurement strategy. And so forth.Oh, one more thing: keep your cool. Don’t antagonize the Americans since that might be construed as an invitation for them to invade. Really?A closer look at postponing a rebuke to the Trudeau/Carney Liberals suggests something else. In a word: if they are not defeated in an election, as they need to have been yesterday, they will stay in power. That is the main point. That is the only point. A grand “national unity” coalition leaves the Liberals with their mitts on the levers of power, which is the only thing they want.The bad faith and historical mendacity of such an outcome is so transparent it’s hard to know where to begin. I’ve already said that the analogy with Robert Borden’s national unity coalition is silly, so let’s start there.In the spring of 1917, the Conservative prime minister proposed to his Liberal counterpart, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, that they form a coalition to pass a conscription act and rule in harmony until till the war was over. That summer the Battle of the Somme took place. Three million soldiers participated; one million were casualties, among them 25,000 Canadians. Conscription seemed to Borden to be the answer to that manpower loss despite the opposition from Quebec — or French Canada as it was still called — led by Henri Bourassa, who was soon joined by Laurier.In late August the Military Service Act was passed and the “conscription crisis” of 1917 began. In October Borden formed the Union government and called an election for December, with conscription the chief issue. After fiddling in various ways with the electoral rules, they won 65% of the seats.Here’s where the analogy breaks up. To state the obvious: a trade “war” is not a real war. Canada may have to replenish its armed forces, but not because of casualties inflicted by an enemy. Borden formed the Union government entirely because of domestic divisions — what was later called the distinct society of Quebec. If there is any remote analogy between today and the early years of the twentieth century, the contemporary situation is more akin to 1910 than to 1917.Consider next some remarks of our first thespian, the prime minister himself. According to him, the Americans want to “cripple” the Canadian economy in order to “annex” the country. First, such words coming from the mouth of an individual whose ten years in office have done more to cripple the Canadian economy than any of his predecessors looks like Justin’s idea of a joke. Such a sense of irony! Who knew?Second, as many serious observers have noted, there is something deeply unseemly in Trudeau parading his hitherto unknown nationalist credentials in public. Years ago he confessed that Canada was a post-national state with no core identity and so no need for borders at all.Third, he said that there was “no justification” for tariffs because the Americans had ignored what Canada has done to wipe fentanyl “from the face of the earth,” and again cited the defence that Canada supplied less than 1% of fentanyl to the US. But as I pointed out in a previous column, this is rubbish. One percent may have been intercepted, but as an RCMP spokesperson, Cpl. Arash Sayed, said, nobody knows how much was not intercepted.Moreover, even if 1% were an accurate estimate, Canada still has a lot of unused capacity to produce fentanyl. Last October a “superlab” was seized in BC along with enough fentanyl to kill every Canadian twice over. Last week a lab blew up in Langley, the most recent of a string of explosions going back several years. None of this is reported in the legacy media so politicians can ignore it. Nor has any legacy media reported on how many precursors for fentanyl have been confiscated at the Port of Vancouver. There seem to be two reasons for this silence: (1) the Port of Vancouver is significantly controlled by the local Hell’s Angels so reporting may be dangerous, and (2) importing precursors is not illegal anyhow. See, there is nothing to see.Finally, there are the fraught personal relations between Trump and Trudeau. Whether Trump holds Justin in as deep a contempt as so many Canadians do is unknown. That he has every reason to do so is beyond dispute. The number of self-indulgent and gratuitous remarks the Prime Minister has thrown Trump’s way indicated he is neither a serious person nor a responsible political leader.These considerations put the cries for national unity and a union government in context. To adopt a Laurentian perspective first, if Canada could get through the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the several “crises” associated with the secularization of Quebec, and even the COVID-19 event without demanding a grand coalition, we can do so again. The tiff with the Americans is no big deal. We might find it a bit hairy, but It’s just transactional business.Second — and this is a real threat — not holding Trudeau and the Liberals to account as soon as possible means postponing a long overdue reckoning. Knowing, as every Canadian must, the sneakiness of that party, their ruthlessness, and their addiction to power, it may mean postponing any reckoning until the next exposure of their chronic corruption, currently scheduled for some time... when? In short, we are already overdue for an election and it has nothing to do with President Trump.

COOPER: A very Laurentian way of looking at Trump's tariff war

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