Is there an achievable, imaginative and tactful way to deal with United States animosity? I think there is, and I’m certain there are many individuals and groups who are right now thinking through this very question and coming up with good ideas about what it will take to move forward without resorting to aggression or violence.
But before this can happen we need to prepare the ground. Standing up to the US bully means ending our love affair with neoliberalism and the fossil fuel economy. It means saying no to Mark Carney and Chrystia Freeland when they propose increasing military spending to two per cent of GDP, as demanded by the US and NATO.
Spending more on the military will in no way put Canada in a position to counter the United States in a head-to-head confrontation. Moreover, capitulating to US demands to spend more on the military makes Canada look like a weak supplicant and only invites further extortive demands by US president Donald Trump.
The second order of business is for Canada to get the hell out of NATO; the latter is not a peace-oriented organization. It is a bellicose association controlled through US imperialism.
From an economic perspective, it is past the time that Canada looks seriously at developing good relations with other trading partners. Moreover, Canadians should be encouraged to buy Canadian, and divest from and boycott American products.
In a strangely ironic way, Trump’s announcement that Canada should become the 51st American state has encouraged Canadians to reflect on who we have become as a result of being so closely tied to the American economy and culture. Sadly, there are some deluded people here who think being the 51st state would be good for Canada. They have forgotten that once upon a time the Canadian ideal was of a diverse, peaceful, multicultural nation that welcomed the stranger, honoured human rights and international law, and protected the most vulnerable at home and away.
Well, we never quite got there, did we? At least part of the reason for that is because we tied ourselves so closely to a greedy, war-mongering, union-hating, gun-loving, racist, dystopic America.
This is not about countering US hegemony with a virulent form of Canadian nationalism. It is about coming together as a diverse cooperative and building a society of caring people who wish to preserve the natural beauty of Canada; a society that relates to its Indigenous peoples with respect and love; a society that empowers working people and protects the nation from greedy corporate oligarchs who care only about themselves; a society that invests in public health and well-being through well-funded social programs; a society that makes corporate polluters and fossil-fuel companies pay for the damage they have done. In short, a society that does everything that Trump and Elon Musk pride themselves on not doing.
I suspect that over time, if we ever came close to achieving the above, the dilapidated “city on the hill” would begin to look at Canada with something approaching longing.
Fred Guerin is a retired philosophy professor living in the qathet region.
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