Mavros Whissell is a Sudbury-based geologist and land technician“Give me your wallet or I’ll shoot you.”That’s CBC reporter Andrew Chang’s assessment of Trump’s “bully strategy” to gain economic advantages using tariffs.Through contiguous episodes of a streaming program Chang hosts called About That, the CBC has launched a veritable propaganda war against the US government, coated in a veneer of experts and tricked out with a speckling of science.About That is admittedly quite pretty and well-produced. But while it’s tempting to believe that Chang’s videos are meant to edify concerned Canadians, the ultimate message is a surprisingly old trope: “America bad.”.Canadians have been fed anti-American pablum for a long time. One such example is an utterly pretentious Heritage Minutes ad, run by CBC in the 1990s, featuring Sam Steele. Set in the Klondike Gold Rush, it portrays Americans as greedy, gun-toting miscreants while lionizing the progenitor to the RCMP in officer Sam Steele. After a confrontation between the two, the American curses himself for not killing the Canadian. “Why didn’t I shoot him?” he shouts. “Damn it!”You’ll note the essence of the gun-toting American prospector has resurfaced in Chang’s anti-American assessment of Trump, “Give me your wallet or I’ll shoot you.”Chang’s show is new lipstick on the old anti-American pig..Trump doesn’t make it difficult, admittedly. His confrontational nature and global tariff attacks make for easy pickings.On the surface, Chang’s analysis over a series of CBC’s About That videos offers a plausible assessment of the economic threats POTUS has made to Canada and countries around the world.I get the impression that Andrew Chang really believes what he’s saying too. His analysis appears to be as even-keeled as one can be with someone as unpredictable as Trump. During these About That segments, I get the feeling that I, as a viewer, am being edified amidst the new cold war between the US and China. That’s because Chang keeps bringing up China as the biggest target of the US tariffs, and in that I agree. I’m also glad many of those tariffs have been placed on hold..But there’s a serious omission in the messaging we’re receiving from Chang and the CBC: there is no discussion about the problems China causes for Canada.There is no mention of the Chinese Communist Party’s interference in Canada’s 2019 and 2021 federal elections. There is no attempt to explain that yes, China has engaged in currency manipulation, as reported in the New York Times. There’s no attempt to discuss if China engages in other unfair trade practices, which they most certainly do.Instead, Chang equivocates on China’s blatant malpractice by stating it’s an issue that “Trump believes” is occurring — even if the rest of the world knows it is reality. This approach is taken so that if one doesn’t believe Trump, and a good portion of CBC’s viewership does not, they can dismiss issues “Trump believes” as unbelievable too. It’s quite a clever, if dishonest approach..It’s also lazy.Kind of like how the CBC lists two of its experts on Chang’s videos, William Rensch and Scott Kennedy, as working for “CSIS” in the lower third. Most of us would understand “CSIS” to mean those experts are from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, an intelligence agency heavily involved in Canada’s national defence.Not quite. The CSIS experts the CBC use to peddle anti-American propaganda are actually from the Center for Strategic & International Studies in the US. The CBC should clarify this, but when they don’t, it all adds to a generally disingenuous approach masked as scientific and cutting edge.Another example from Chang’s show is when Bob Bordone, founder of the Cambridge Negotiation Institute opines, “When you are at war, inconsistency, chaos, surprise attacks are exactly what you want. But when someone is your business partner, are they people who are arbitrary, capricious and random?” Bordone offers the false dichotomy that either Trump is a business partner, or he is at war with Canada. Of course, that’s hardly all the possibilities available for our bilateral relationship. But Bordone certainly entertains the scariest.There’s no question that what Trump is doing destabilizes Canada and is therefore dangerous. But to have Chang actively portray China as a victim of the US, while equivocating China’s own corruption as being what “Trump believes,” one must question the motivation for the About That show altogether.The anti-Americanism of yesterday hasn’t gone away. It remains a useful fire for the CBC to keep stoked. Then it can be used for either the CBC or its benefactors. Anti-Americanism remains a powerful tool that can be used to manipulate Canadians across the country.After all, how do you think Carney won the election?Mavros Whissell is a Sudbury-based geologist and land technician.
