How Should Canada Deal With Trump?

  By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

Someone would make a fortune selling t-shirts with a picture of Donald Trump and the slogan “Make Canada Great Again.”

What?! No, it’s not a joke about making Canada the fifty-first American state. It’s about forcing this country to shape up and act like a sovereign nation. Even the CBC, no friend of the U.S. president, admits this.

“After a decade-plus of U.S. frustrations and concerns being expressed in more discrete, diplomatic and low-profile settings, this has brought Canadians to the table to have serious, meaningful and substantive conversations about national security, public safety and economic security.”

Let’s be clear: Donald Trump is wrong about the American deficit with Canada, in purely monetary terms. In 2023, the deficit was $64 billion, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, far less than the “$200 billion or $250 billion” that Trump claims and less than its trade deficits with China, Germany, Mexico and Japan.

Economists say the deficit is driven by Canadian energy exports, including crude oil, which the United States buys at a discount. If energy is removed from the equation, the deficit becomes a surplus.

Canada buys more from the United States than any other country does. If the energy sector -- oil, natural gas, and electricity -- is not included in calculations, the U.S. has had a trade surplus with Canada for the last sixteen years straight. Meanwhile nearly 80 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S.

But perception is what counts. America is becoming more like China and Russia -- a regional great power whose statecraft is increasingly amoral and purely self-interested.

Trump and right-wing American politicians have become angry with Canada. They consider Canada profligate and, in its policies, wrong-headed and injurious to itself – and to the United States. (It also didn’t help that Justin Trudeau last fall voiced disappointment that Americans didn’t elect Kamala Harris.)

In their view, Canada doesn’t properly police its border with the U.S., pays little for national defence, and has an open door immigration policy that brought thousands upon thousands of people into the country who, these Republicans think, want to hurt America. Canada also is considered lax about dangerous drugs, which then might enter the United States.

Trump won the 2024 election for many reasons, but illegal immigration was topmost in mind for many of the voters who elected him. And it wasn’t just about the southern border.

“Canada should have acted long ago,” maintains Stephanie Carvin, a former analyst at Canada’s intelligence service, CSIS.  She says the country does have a problem with international criminal groups, money-laundering and fentanyl, despite the oft-repeated statistic that drug busts are rare.

Canada today spends under 1.4 per cent of GDP on defence, well below the 2.0 per cent commitment to NATO, let alone the increased targets currently being discussed. European members of NATO are advocating a 3.0 per cent figure. Serious budget choices lie ahead.

Justin Trudeau has now agreed to Trump’s demands that Canada appoint a fentanyl czar and list cartels as terrorist organizations. A new intelligence order establishes fentanyl-fighting as a priority, with $200 million in funding.

It orders Canada's electronic-intelligence agency to track and disrupt cross-border drug operations; co-ordinates multiple police, border, intelligence and other agencies in one hub; and demands that agencies work with each other and U.S. counterparts.

The Trump economic assault has even affected long-standing internal problems. The regulations that are often criticized as barriers to trade between Canadian provinces could all crumble within a month, according to Anita Anand, federal cabinet minister of transport and internal trade. Why was this not done years ago?

Some Canadians agree. Here’s Alberta premier Danielle Smith: “It needs to be said that Ottawa’s parade of anti-energy policies, red tape on resource development, lack of investment in our Armed Forces and our soft-on-crime laws have left our country in an incredibly vulnerable and weakened state economically and politically.”

Smith had been urging Ottawa to appoint a drugs and border czar, preferably an army general, to head up border security.

“If we are going to thrive as a nation again — if we are going to control our own destiny independent of the actions of other countries — we must stop limiting our own prosperity and inflicting economic wounds on ourselves.”

Smith has also reignited calls to dust off old energy projects, such as Energy East and Northern Gateway, previously not approved and get them constructed. She wants a national joint effort to fast track and build multiple oil and gas pipelines to the east, west and north coasts of Canada and to construct multiple LNG terminals on each coast using steel from Quebec and Ontario, and workers from all over the country.

A pipeline that would move Alberta oil to eastern markets, including Irving Oil’s major Saint John oil refinery in New Brunswick, would effectively do away with the country’s dependence on foreign oil.

In 2023, Canada imported nearly 500,000 barrels of oil a day from countries like the United States, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria even though this country has the third-largest oil reserve in the world.

Trump’s actions are a wake-up call. Might we call it “tough love?” That may be going too far! But it has certainly got Canada moving to tackle long-standing problems.