By Michael Nickerson
Viewer discretion is advised. Why? Well, put simply: I’m going to quote former Prime Minister Trudeau. No, not Justin; he’s barely out of office. We still need time to heal (plus he’s not very quotable). Instead I refer to words spoken by his father Pierre way back in 1969 in a speech to the Washington Press Club. Likening our relationship to the United States as something akin to sleeping with an elephant, he said: “No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.” It’s safe to say he never envisioned a bull elephant suffering from roid rage and a case of rabies as his bedmate. Oh if we could turn back the clock.
Now I’m not going to even hazard to guess what Donald Trump has gotten up to in the time it takes these words to reach your eyes…remember, rabies and roids. But two weeks into the New Year he’s already attacked Venezuela, abducted their president and taken their oil, threatened Columbia, Cuba, and Iran with military strikes and/or regime change, and snuck in a quick air strike in Syria. He’s also scared the parkas off our neighbours in Greenland with talk of annexing the island, which would leave us with the curious situation of Denmark invoking Article 5 of the NATO charter against the US, calling on not just Canada and other NATO members to defend Danish sovereignty, but the US to do the same…against itself, presumably. A head scratcher, that.
It’s a bit of an urban myth that Trudeau called Canada a mouse to the US’s elephant in that little allegory of yore, but the comparison is quite sound. As former Chief of the Defence Staff, (Ret’d) Gen. Tom Lawson, put it in a recent interview with CTV News, the US “military is about 40 times the mass, strength and funding of the Canadian military.” This says nothing about their economic power, but it’s safe to say that next to our raging pachyderm of a neighbour, you might as well just call us Mickey.
This realization has come as a bit of a shock to some over the past year, with decades of good relations having lulled us into the comforting misconception that neighbours help and support neighbours, not try to shut down their economy or threaten enforced statehood. Unfortunately we (and much of the western world) have sleepwalked ourselves into irrelevancy. So now that all the mice are awake, the question is what we do to avoid being trampled.
Well our chief mouse, Mark Carney, has certainly laid out his plan, namely one of economic and military diversification. And to give the man his due, he’s made all the right noises, and if frequent-flyer miles are any indication then he’s been busy making new friends, cutting new deals, and helping Canada not feel so alone.
That’s the idea anyway, and to some degree it is bearing fruit. We’re now partnered with the EU with regards to military procurement projects under the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) program. He’s secured foreign investment from the UAE to the tune of $70 billion, mended ties with India, and has reached out to China to try for the same. Of course there are many who are quite unhappy with that already, crying that Canada is selling out our values to the all mighty dollar, tying our can to disreputable regimes and the like. To which I say, yep. He is doing all of that, and likely a lot more in the future.
To say Carney is walking the proverbial tightrope is an understatement…think of it more as a taught thread strung over a crazed elephant. He has to balance diversification with not upsetting American politicians or industry; same goes with the military. And he has to pick his fights, such as quietly lobying for US security guarantees in a Ukraine/Russia peace agreement while turning a blind eye to US incursions in South America.
This whole exercise will require patience with our Prime Minister, from pundits to opposition parties, to say nothing of Canadians in general. But Carney’s not the only one walking a tightrope; we all are. How much leeway do you give him before demanding results? How far do you let him go in the name of diversification? It’s a delicate balancing act that will continue long past Carney’s tenure if it’s to succeed. Hopefully we can. It’s that or get trampled, so let’s tread carefully.
