Opinion: It’s been a long time since news in Canadian media has been as interesting as US news.
But it looks like we’re there now!
The presidential election in the US far outweighed anything going on up here, but with that now over and Trump into office and doing things that affect Canada, what our politicians say and do in response is of interest to all of us on our side of the border.
Regular readers of this space my be wondering if I now regret my support for Trump. Not at all. It was the best choice for Americans to make for Americans. Even though the tariffs he announced on Saturday would be bad for Canada, they may be good for the US, and as I said before, it is the Americans who elected him, not us. And I would just as soon fight with Trump, and see them have a strong country, as I would see their country go down the drain as they were doing under the incompetent Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, which they were surely doing. Fights come to an end, but a bankrupt country is hard to bring back.
So where are we with these tariffs?
The events that have marked the issue so far are Trump announcing tariffs on Saturday night and then, after a couple of conversations with Trudeau on Monday, putting them on hold for a month, similar to Trump’s deal with Mexico. So maybe the tariffs will eventually be imposed, maybe they will be changed or maybe they’ll never see the light of day.
It certainly seems as if Trump is moderating his negotiation stance, if nothing else.
If I understood correctly, the Trump tariff talk towards Canada started with us being delinquent on our NATO defence commitments. And he was right, we were and are not, keeping our commitments, which is nothing to be proud of. Even Albania kept their their commitment. So did Montenegro. And Luxemburg. But not Canada!
That, however, is defence commitments. And I’m not sure that that is what is really uppermost in Trump’s mind right now. What I smell is something he’s not telling us, or even telling his own people about. I think, and I only think, of course, I don’t know, that fifteen minutes after he sat down in the Oval Office by himself, and started reading the tea leaves, he might have started to find out that the US is in serious financial trouble. If that could have been true, he couldn’t talk about it to anyone, lest he risk a recession. If there is serious financial trouble in the US the last thing Trump needs, or you and I need, is financial panic in the US.
If you look at quotes from Trump himself, it seems to me that more and more of them speak of trade issues. Sure, he occasionally mentions fentanyl and illegal border crossings, but there always seems to be some addressing of financial impacts. Like a talented hockey player, Trump may be saying he’s going one way, then going another.
So what should we do to try to resolve this issue?
And is it really an issue?
Maybe it’s just a political issue between us and a bully to the South?
Not at all.
Do you remember the stories of the fire preparedness in Los Angeles prior to the recent disastrous fires? Remember the fire trucks that were broke down? And the fire hydrants that had no water?
It would surprise most of us that our military is in worse shape than those fire departments!
It did me.
There is a body called the Canadian Global Affairs Institute that studies these things and they reported in April of 2024 that the Canadian Armed Forces are 16,000 people understaffed and that half of our military equipment doesn’t work. Now I don’t know much about the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, but even if they are wrong by half, we’re in bad shape. In a real military skirmish, we probably couldn’t defend ourselves for fifteen minutes.
And here’s the real situation, and it’s just like the LA fires: We may never know our real condition until it’s too late!
I think we could possibly solve this with a cash deal with the US. Cash has a way of settling many things. And yes, I’m talking about writing the US a cheque for $20 to $30 billion dollars. I don’t know what the number should be, but it should equal the amount that we are behind in meeting our 2% NATO commitment for this year, whatever that is.
So even if it looks like we didn’t do anything about this until the US shamed us into it, we need to be much more prepared militarily than we are. Better to make a deal with the US than have Putin move into the Canadian Arctic with us unprepared and the US not willing to help us.
In addition, working something out with the US now would also protect our jobs, and our supply lines in industry and prevent a trainload of worry in our Canadian homes.
And if you would like to end this with a couple of numbers let me tell you this: the Canadian defence budget for 2023 was about $29 billion. The US has about nine times more people than Canada which, if you multiply $29 billion times nine, should make the US defence budget about $261 billion. But it wasn’t that, it was $820 billion. Which probably means that we have been way underspending on defence, which is what Trump is saying. And we haven’t just been underspending this year. It’s been going on almost forever. It’s also partly why, while each Canadian’s share of Canada’s accumulated national debt is about $49,900, each American’s share of their national debt is about $112,260 per person.
So isn’t it little wonder that somebody in the US is calling us out on defence?
And if Trump’s concerns are not defence, but simply financial concerns, a cash settlement would solve that too!
Duane Crandall is a former Publisher of the Golden Star (1982 – 1987) and the Golden News (1991 – 2003). He is a retired politician, having served as MLA for Columbia River-Revelstoke from 1986 – 1991.
