The panic over the possibility of tariffs against Canadian exports to the United States remains unabated, especially in the legacy Laurentian media (try reading Andrew Coyne in the Globe and Mail) and the sources they love to quote.Among the latter, let’s start with University of Victoria international relations professor Will Greaves. He has dreamt up a remarkable idea: Canada should refuse to accept President Trump’s designated ambassador to Canada. That would be Pete Hoekstra, a former Congressman from Michigan, a former ambassador to the Netherlands, a good friend of the president, and a person who knows something about Canada.How would this play out? The procedure by which diplomats present their credentials is straightforward and ends with the ambassador designate providing his “letter of credence” to the Governor General. Does Professor Greaves anticipate that Mary Simon should lock the doors to Rideau Hall?Professor Greaves also anticipated with glee that the Americans would likely retaliate. He didn’t say how, but did say that retaliation would be the price of Canadian “sovereignty” and “independence.” This kind of pearl-clutching is so silly that only an academic would embrace it.Here is another example: the territorial premiers, after insisting that the Arctic is not for sale, proposed collaborating with the Americans to develop northern resources. Perhaps the Arctic is just for rent?Or there is former Vice Admiral Mark Norman who proposed something equally bizarre, invoking Article Four of the NATO treaty. Why? Because “the territorial integrity, political independence and security” of Canada is threatened by President Trump. Really?One wonders if the admiral is aware of the irony of invoking any NATO provision considering Canada’s meagre contributions to the alliance over the past generation. He must know about this dereliction. He’s a former admiral, after all.The usual array of policy changes that Canada’s national spokespersons urge us to undertake are: cut taxes, spend more on defence, build more pipelines and reduce inter-provincial trade barriers. But as I pointed out in a previous column, and as everybody knows who bothers to think about it, if these are such sound policies, they would already have been undertaken, which means that Canadian political leaders do not think, and never have thought, that they were sound. None will be enacted, so saying they “should” be is just sadistic dreaming.Another variant, now that Pierre Poilievre is no longer running against the disgraced Justin Trudeau, is to insist he come up with a new strategy. So much is obvious, and many Laurentian journalists have figured it out. But then they ask the wrong question. As Tasha Kheiriddin put it, “what wizard can save us from Trump?”Tasha, there are no wizards in politics. They don’t have magical powers at their disposal. The right question is: “who can emulate Trump?”The most obvious of Trump’s innovations that Poilievre would do well to copy is the new semi-department of government efficiency, DOGE, led by Elon Musk. Maybe Poilievre could recruit Kevin O’Leary for the job here. As some American commentators observed, there is a profound irony in the existence of DOGE. The only reason it can be effective is because first, the American left has spent the better part of a century engaged in expanding the executive authority of the office of the president and second, they have centralized power in DC. Now they find, to their horror, that President Trump is wielding the centralized power they created against them. What did they expect?Likewise in Canada over a generation of political scientists have criticized the concentration of power in the Prime Minister’s Office and the central agencies — the Canadian deep state, if you will. But a centralized structure is also easier to dismantle. Just ask Machiavelli.The similarity of Canadian and American problems is obvious. They include: cutting the bloat in the national capital region, which means getting rid of the thousands of tax-eating officials hired by Justin over the past few years. Consider the spending at Global Affairs. Like the Americans USAID or the Brits’ Oxfam, it has become a gigantic money-squandering scam for useless lefty virtue-signalling. Then look at defence procurement, which is equally as great a scandal here as the Pentagon waste is in the States. Get rid of supply management and be prepared to laugh at Quebec as they screech to high heaven. The American equivalent, their Department of Agriculture, is being audited by Musk and his people. Extinguish DEI in all the areas that receive federal funding and make a special target of universities. That would be a start. In addition to defunding CBC, Poilievre needs to consider eliminating Canadian contributions to the UN and most of their malevolent agencies.So far Poilievre has spoken only of cutting foreign aid. John Ivison writing in in the National Post said, it “sounds almost Trumpian.” Ivison’s friend Mark Carney said the same thing a couple of days later. So, if such a modest proposal is almost Trumpian, why not go whole hog? Pierre, you’ll never get a Carney voter onside anyhow. And you don’t want them.So far, I have seen only one legacy media piece that even tried to make sense of President Trump’s recent moves. That was a story by Tyler Dawson, starting on the front page of the National Post. He actually read Trump’s book, The Art of the Deal to try to understand where Trump was coming from..HANNAFORD: The Art of the Steal.Among other bits of wisdom the book contains, we learn it’s a good idea to keep your options open, to negotiate from a position of strength, to wear down your adversaries, fight only when all else has failed, and never to appear scared. What few observers have noticed is that the very title of Trump’s book evokes Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. This is not an accident, and only the stupidity of journalists whose prejudices mislead them into thinking Trump is stupid, can explain their oversight. Here are a few applications of the aphorisms of the eighth-century BC master that have obvious current applications.Trump has had a few difficulties getting his cabinet picks past the US Senate. They have often been unexpected choices, but the result makes a fine team. “The only way to manage troops,” said Sun Tzu, “consists of making them equally resolute, so to act as one.” That seems to have worked.War, as both Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz have observed, is a continuation of politics with other means. For Sun Tzu “warfare is the art of deception.” If you wonder why Trump is running circles around his opponents, especially Canadian ones, consider this: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.” And the third option, which applies to Canadians above all: “if you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” This is what we can look forward to.As for Canadian self-understanding, consider another classic military text, Thucydides’ History of the War between the Spartans and the Athenians —which I happen to be teaching this term. In Book III, Ch. 14, a delegation from Mytilene, which wanted to leave the Athenian empire, tried to obtain help from the Spartans. The Athenians accused the Mytilenians of breaking their oath and rebelling, which is pretty much the way the Americans would look upon Admiral Norman’s proposal to misread the NATO agreement. After exhausting several spurious arguments about why Sparta should help, the Mytilenians finally had to come clean: they were supplicants asking the Spartans to “be the men the Greeks think you are and that our fears need you to be.”All this posturing where Canadians think they can refuse to accept the American ambassador or invoke Title Four of the NATO agreement or anticipate wizardry are, as with the Mytilenians, simply expressions of fear. That said, Canadians might extend some gratitude to the American president for giving them the opportunity to address our real problems.It would be both courageous and honourable for Pierre Poilievre to seize the opportunity. After all, no one expects anything similar from the vain, supine, and oleaginous Liberals. His present pusillanimity may cost Poilievre the election. It certainly is his to lose.
The panic over the possibility of tariffs against Canadian exports to the United States remains unabated, especially in the legacy Laurentian media (try reading Andrew Coyne in the Globe and Mail) and the sources they love to quote.Among the latter, let’s start with University of Victoria international relations professor Will Greaves. He has dreamt up a remarkable idea: Canada should refuse to accept President Trump’s designated ambassador to Canada. That would be Pete Hoekstra, a former Congressman from Michigan, a former ambassador to the Netherlands, a good friend of the president, and a person who knows something about Canada.How would this play out? The procedure by which diplomats present their credentials is straightforward and ends with the ambassador designate providing his “letter of credence” to the Governor General. Does Professor Greaves anticipate that Mary Simon should lock the doors to Rideau Hall?Professor Greaves also anticipated with glee that the Americans would likely retaliate. He didn’t say how, but did say that retaliation would be the price of Canadian “sovereignty” and “independence.” This kind of pearl-clutching is so silly that only an academic would embrace it.Here is another example: the territorial premiers, after insisting that the Arctic is not for sale, proposed collaborating with the Americans to develop northern resources. Perhaps the Arctic is just for rent?Or there is former Vice Admiral Mark Norman who proposed something equally bizarre, invoking Article Four of the NATO treaty. Why? Because “the territorial integrity, political independence and security” of Canada is threatened by President Trump. Really?One wonders if the admiral is aware of the irony of invoking any NATO provision considering Canada’s meagre contributions to the alliance over the past generation. He must know about this dereliction. He’s a former admiral, after all.The usual array of policy changes that Canada’s national spokespersons urge us to undertake are: cut taxes, spend more on defence, build more pipelines and reduce inter-provincial trade barriers. But as I pointed out in a previous column, and as everybody knows who bothers to think about it, if these are such sound policies, they would already have been undertaken, which means that Canadian political leaders do not think, and never have thought, that they were sound. None will be enacted, so saying they “should” be is just sadistic dreaming.Another variant, now that Pierre Poilievre is no longer running against the disgraced Justin Trudeau, is to insist he come up with a new strategy. So much is obvious, and many Laurentian journalists have figured it out. But then they ask the wrong question. As Tasha Kheiriddin put it, “what wizard can save us from Trump?”Tasha, there are no wizards in politics. They don’t have magical powers at their disposal. The right question is: “who can emulate Trump?”The most obvious of Trump’s innovations that Poilievre would do well to copy is the new semi-department of government efficiency, DOGE, led by Elon Musk. Maybe Poilievre could recruit Kevin O’Leary for the job here. As some American commentators observed, there is a profound irony in the existence of DOGE. The only reason it can be effective is because first, the American left has spent the better part of a century engaged in expanding the executive authority of the office of the president and second, they have centralized power in DC. Now they find, to their horror, that President Trump is wielding the centralized power they created against them. What did they expect?Likewise in Canada over a generation of political scientists have criticized the concentration of power in the Prime Minister’s Office and the central agencies — the Canadian deep state, if you will. But a centralized structure is also easier to dismantle. Just ask Machiavelli.The similarity of Canadian and American problems is obvious. They include: cutting the bloat in the national capital region, which means getting rid of the thousands of tax-eating officials hired by Justin over the past few years. Consider the spending at Global Affairs. Like the Americans USAID or the Brits’ Oxfam, it has become a gigantic money-squandering scam for useless lefty virtue-signalling. Then look at defence procurement, which is equally as great a scandal here as the Pentagon waste is in the States. Get rid of supply management and be prepared to laugh at Quebec as they screech to high heaven. The American equivalent, their Department of Agriculture, is being audited by Musk and his people. Extinguish DEI in all the areas that receive federal funding and make a special target of universities. That would be a start. In addition to defunding CBC, Poilievre needs to consider eliminating Canadian contributions to the UN and most of their malevolent agencies.So far Poilievre has spoken only of cutting foreign aid. John Ivison writing in in the National Post said, it “sounds almost Trumpian.” Ivison’s friend Mark Carney said the same thing a couple of days later. So, if such a modest proposal is almost Trumpian, why not go whole hog? Pierre, you’ll never get a Carney voter onside anyhow. And you don’t want them.So far, I have seen only one legacy media piece that even tried to make sense of President Trump’s recent moves. That was a story by Tyler Dawson, starting on the front page of the National Post. He actually read Trump’s book, The Art of the Deal to try to understand where Trump was coming from..HANNAFORD: The Art of the Steal.Among other bits of wisdom the book contains, we learn it’s a good idea to keep your options open, to negotiate from a position of strength, to wear down your adversaries, fight only when all else has failed, and never to appear scared. What few observers have noticed is that the very title of Trump’s book evokes Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. This is not an accident, and only the stupidity of journalists whose prejudices mislead them into thinking Trump is stupid, can explain their oversight. Here are a few applications of the aphorisms of the eighth-century BC master that have obvious current applications.Trump has had a few difficulties getting his cabinet picks past the US Senate. They have often been unexpected choices, but the result makes a fine team. “The only way to manage troops,” said Sun Tzu, “consists of making them equally resolute, so to act as one.” That seems to have worked.War, as both Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz have observed, is a continuation of politics with other means. For Sun Tzu “warfare is the art of deception.” If you wonder why Trump is running circles around his opponents, especially Canadian ones, consider this: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.” And the third option, which applies to Canadians above all: “if you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” This is what we can look forward to.As for Canadian self-understanding, consider another classic military text, Thucydides’ History of the War between the Spartans and the Athenians —which I happen to be teaching this term. In Book III, Ch. 14, a delegation from Mytilene, which wanted to leave the Athenian empire, tried to obtain help from the Spartans. The Athenians accused the Mytilenians of breaking their oath and rebelling, which is pretty much the way the Americans would look upon Admiral Norman’s proposal to misread the NATO agreement. After exhausting several spurious arguments about why Sparta should help, the Mytilenians finally had to come clean: they were supplicants asking the Spartans to “be the men the Greeks think you are and that our fears need you to be.”All this posturing where Canadians think they can refuse to accept the American ambassador or invoke Title Four of the NATO agreement or anticipate wizardry are, as with the Mytilenians, simply expressions of fear. That said, Canadians might extend some gratitude to the American president for giving them the opportunity to address our real problems.It would be both courageous and honourable for Pierre Poilievre to seize the opportunity. After all, no one expects anything similar from the vain, supine, and oleaginous Liberals. His present pusillanimity may cost Poilievre the election. It certainly is his to lose.
