Suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) may not be a requirement to appear among the pseudo-patriots on the Laurentian media, but it surely helps. Led by the premier of Ontario, our new Captain Canada, the amount of defamatory rubbish hurled in the direction of Donald J. Trump and his administration was exceeded only by the venomous criticism of anyone, especially if Canadian, who tried to understand (and not necessarily to defend) the Americans’ perspective on Canada.We are not talking about such shameful facts as our miserable contribution to our own defence or to NATO. No one ever wants to talk about that. It’s too obvious. But consider a few other areas of public policy that, on the surface, look more defensible.Let’s start with border security. The current mess turns out to be mainly a dispute among the unions that represent the workforces of the various agencies involved. Mark Weber, president of the Customs and Immigration Union, which administers the official ports of entry for Canada Border Services, said it wasn’t his guys’ job to stop things going to the US. Canada’s promised response to do so, he said, was “border theatre.”According to him the way to solve this non-problem was to give his union authority to patrol between official ports of entry. At present, he said, only the RCMP can do that. In Alberta, the Sheriffs’ Interdiction Patrols apparently have authority as well.The federal cops replied by claiming that they, and only they, can enforce federal laws — not the Alberta Sheriffs or the OPP. Canada Border Services insist that they alone can determine whether any arrested person has a legitimate asylum claim. That’s why they need the authority to arrest illegals anywhere.But the Mounties then say that they are the only ones properly trained to do the job — as was apparently demonstrated by the release of a video showing how they capture heat images of illegal migrants and then swoop in to arrest them. This public relations triumph was presumably why they released the video in the first place. For the RCMP the answer is clear: more resources. For them.Curiously enough, that is the same answer that the Customs and Immigration Union came up with. More resources and more authority. But for them, not the Horsemen. In short, border protection has been turned into an intramural bureaucratic spat. That way no serious questions get asked.Trump singles out Canada’s — or is it Quebec’s? — supply management of milk as a major obstacle to free trade in North America. Welcome to the club, Mr. President. Canadian economists and informed Canadian non-economists beyond the frontier of Quebec have been saying the same thing for years. No doubt the Americans have read their analyses — to say nothing of more recent accusations of blatant Canadian cheating on what was solemnly agreed to in the 2018 USMCA trade treaty.Other responses by Canadians were equally predictable. For example, interprovincial trade liberalization, so widely supported by the Laurentians as an antidote to US tariffs, will not happen and wouldn’t make much of a difference anyhow. It won’t happen because provincial governments like barriers. Alberta is largely an exception and Albertans benefit as a result. But in 2018 the Supreme Court of Canada made a very political decision that ruled that Gerald Comeau could not bring 14 cases of beer from Quebec to his home in New Brunswick because New Brunswick had a law that restricted the amount of beer citizens could transport through the New Brunswick border. The court said, amazingly, that New Brunswick regulations were not designed to impede interprovincial trade. Really?The Laurentians and those outside central Canada who swallowed the Laurentian myth also went on offence. No one was surprised at the result. According to a Nanos/Bloomberg poll, over 80% of Canadians supported an export tax on oil and gas. The problem, of course, is that oil and gas do not belong to Canada. The stuff belongs for the most part to the citizens of Alberta and Saskatchewan, and the governments of those provinces oppose export taxes.Do you think Donald Trump knows this? And if so, what is his strategy to propose only a 10% tariff for energy, not 25%?To state the obvious: it’s a pretty good wedge issue if you are looking to acquire a “cherished” 51st state. And I don’t mean Greenland. Besides, does anyone seriously think the Americans have their eye on Quebec or even New Brunswick?The one issue the President mentioned that most normal people agree is real concerned fentanyl, the effects of which are visible in every corner of both countries. Official Canadian spokespersons however simply deny the problem exists.Less than 1% of fentanyl entering the US comes from Canada, say our health officials and other defenders of Canadian innocence. True, in 2024 only 50 pounds of fentanyl coming from Canada was seized by the Americans, as compared to ten tons of the junk coming from Mexico. By way of explanation, RCMP Cpl. Arash Sayed introduced a dash of reality: the actual quantity of fentanyl that ends up in the US from Canada, he said, is in fact unknown — for the obvious reason that no one in either country knows how much was not stopped.Seyed also said that fentanyl “super labs” have been proliferating in BC. “We have the world’s most sophisticated drug super labs,” he said, and the number of them is growing. Much of the product ends up in the emerging markets of Europe, which may get us off the hook with the Americans. Are Canadians proud of the destructive success of their criminals?A closer look at the super labs of the Lower Mainland in fact ought to be a source of shame. When press reports appearing over the past year claimed that BC government-supplied opioids were being sold on the black market by the addicts who received them for free, the BC ministry of health, which oversees administering the “safer supply” program, said it was all “misinformation.” This farce was ended a few days ago when a leaked government report said the resale of drugs was “significant.” The scam is obvious: docs prescribe opioids that the BC government provides for free; patients then re-sell them and use the proceeds to buy illegal drugs such as fentanyl that pack more of a kick.Dr. Bonnie Henry, the provincial health officer who made such a shambles of BC’s response to the COVID-19 event, agrees. Her answer is to expand the free opioid program to include fentanyl. The only reason government-supplied stuff was diverted to the black market, she said, was because of the “unmet needs” of addicts. The obvious answer was for the health ministry to supply more potent drugs. The BC Conservatives called the whole thing “taxpayer-funded drug trafficking.” Seems about right.By now the bottom line of all this criticism of President Trump and his proposals is clear enough: TDS is just a giant excuse not to look in the mirror. This is the only way for Canadians to keep their sanctimonious moral superiority intact. Samuel Johnson once said that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. This Laurentian-led pseudo-patriotism is the last refuge of the nation of scoundrels that Canada has become.
