VAN MAREN: Trudeau the last person who should speak for us... he can't even define Canada

Outgoing prime minister Justin Trudeau, who cancelled his year-end interviews with Canadian media outlets, sat down recently with CNN’s Jake Tapper for a friendly chat about the future of Canada-US relations. The context is two-fold. First, incoming president Donald Trump has escalated his personal razzing of Trudeau — calling him “Governor Trudeau” and musing about Canada as a 51st state. Second, he offered more aggressive speculations about using “economic force” to annex Canada entirely.That isn’t a threat, of course, but is certainly a forceful insult to Canada’s national pride.Justin Trudeau, unfortunately, is uniquely unsuited and unqualified to respond to this. He doesn't seem to know what Canada is, or who Canadians are. And, he has gone out of his way to antagonize the president-elect.Let's start there. Much of the current bad blood between the Trump Republicans and the Trudeau Liberals was deliberately cultivated by Trudeau, who has spent several years incessantly calling Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives “MAGA Conservatives” — and he didn’t mean it as a compliment. In fact, the Liberal Party’s campaign strategy until now has been to insist that Poilievre and Trump are one and the same, and that this means Poilievre is Very Bad. It is an assertion, not an insinuation. Trudeau was apparently as confident as the Democrats that he would never again have to face Trump across a negotiating table.It is worth mentioning that the last time he did, it went very badly —at least, if a recent anecdote by American commentator Ben Shapiro is to be believed: “I’ll give you a story. I can’t give you the source on this story, because I don’t want to betray confidence,” he told an audience in Arizona. “President Trump is meeting with Justin Trudeau…during the first administration. He is asking for a bunch of things for Canada to do. Trudeau doesn’t want to give all of them, so Trump says to his people, ‘Bring Justin to me.’ So apparently they sit across from another. Trudeau is talking with the president, and Trump says: ‘Justin, I want you to tell me: If there were one thing I could do tomorrow to completely wreck the Canadian economy, what would it be?’”And Trudeau goes: ‘Well, Mr. President, there’s a lot of things, you’re a very powerful country, but if you tariffed our cars, that would be really, really bad.’ And Trump goes: ‘Justin, I’m going to teach you a lesson. The first thing not to do in a negotiation is answer the question: If you could do one thing to destroy me, what would it be?’ Trump continues: ‘I don’t care about Canada, I only care about America — so I’m going to tariff all your cars unless you give me what I want.’ He got what he wanted. That’s how President Trump thinks about tariffs.The second time around — which is now delayed due to Trudeau’s decision to leave the country with lame-duck leadership while the Liberal Party tries to swap him out with someone who might blunt the electoral devastation coming their way — would have been even worse. Even after flying to Mar-A-Lago to kiss the ring, Trudeau could not resist deliberately provoking Trump. At an Ottawa gala in December, he told the feminist organization Equal Voice that: “We were supposed to be on a steady, if difficult, march towards progress. And yet, just a few weeks ago, the United States voted for a second time to not elect its first woman president.” He went on to promise, in his characteristically cloying tone, that he was, and will always be, a feminist (although many of his colleagues have experienced that differently.)Keep in mind that at that point, Trudeau had not yet made the decision to turn over the keys of 24 Sussex to what will almost certainly be Canada’s second of three prime ministers in 2025. This means that when he said that, he fully intended to be negotiating with Trump on tariffs that pose a massive threat to the Canadian economy, while simultaneously giving televised speeches condemning Trump’s voters and bemoaning the fact that the famously thin-skinned Trump had beaten Harris. That is political malpractice, profound incompetence, or personal stupidity. Regardless of which explanation you prefer, it is badly damaging to Canada at a time when we desperately need genuine leadership. (Statesmanship is likely too much to ask, and anyhow too associated with costumes to risk.)Which brings me back to Trudeau’s appearance on CNN. Mustering all his deep national pride, Trudeau informed Tapper: “Canadians are incredibly proud of being Canadian. One of the ways we define ourself most easily, is, well, we’re not American.” With one sentence, Trudeau — who, as I have noted in a previous column, boasted a decade ago about Canada being the first “post-national state” with “no core identity” — advocated the most anaemic and anti-American definition of Canada that he could come up with. It would be like an Australian announcing that they define themselves by not being New Zealanders. .VAN MAREN: Your Canada just isn't good enough for Trudeau. Surely there is something more? Something about Canada’s magnificent military history? The settling of the frontier? The fathers of Confederation?Nope. He came up with: “We’re not you guys.”It could have been worse. He could have insisted that Canada’s identity is progressive; boasted that we are the only democracy that permits abortion until birth; that Canada has a full four-month Pride season rather than a single month; that the flag of the transgender movement is hoisted on Parliament Hill each June in a special ceremony.But he restrained himself on all that, and for that we should be grateful. He of course went on to insist that his staggering unpopularity is the result of an “intersection of both right-wing attacks and social media” which has caused “a lot of misinformation and disinformation.”Back in 2015, Justin Trudeau infamously declared that “Canada is back.” That seems like a very, very long time ago. After ten years of Liberal rule, the prime minister can’t even explain who we are.

VAN MAREN: Trudeau the last person who should speak for us... he can't even define Canada

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