Canada

No way, no how. That’s the message from Canadians to Donald Trump’s taunts about becoming the 51st state. At least that’s what the opinion polls show, isn’t it?

Yes, if you look at the overall findings. Support for joining the U.S. of A. is down around 13 per cent (Leger Marketing) or 10 per cent (Angus Reid Institute). Those are the kind of numbers that support Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s confident statement that “there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell” of Canada becoming an American state.

Trudeau is right about that, but the top lines in those polls don’t show the whole picture. Inside a more recent survey is a story with more troubling implications for the future of this country.

The more that President Donald Trump feigns disinterest in all things Canadian, the more you have to think he really, really wants what Canada has.

“We don’t need them to make our cars. We don’t need their lumber…we don’t need their oil and gas,” he told the World Economic Forum in Davos last week.

America’s “bad management” over the past four years has allowed trade to become imbalanced, to the point where the U.S. is “paying US$200 billion a year to keep Canada going”, Trump said. (The U.S. Bureau for Economic Analysis pegs the goods and services trade deficit at US$40.6 billion, as a result of the Americans importing large quantities of discounted Canadian heavy crude.)

Nothing good will happen with Trudeau playing PM.

The majority of Canadians are in favour of halting oil exports to America in the face of U.S. tariffs, yet they also say it would be unfair for Alberta to absorb the economic fallout resulting from such a move, a new survey suggests.

Nearly 60 percent of Canadians polled by Innovative Research say banning Canadian oil exports to the United States would serve as an effective means of exerting pressure on the United States should President Donald Trump follow through on his threat of 25 percent tariffs on Canadian goods.

In December, after threatening Canada with crippling 25-per-cent tariffs, Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image of him bizarrely laying claim to the Canadian Rockies (though the Swiss Alps were pictured) and the Maple Leaf flag. Mr. Trump’s other statements that month left little doubt about the narrative he was spinning. Following a dinner with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who had gone to Mar-a-Lago to try to head off the tariffs, Mr. Trump seemingly demoted the Prime Minister, calling him the governor “of the Great State of Canada.”

Then, on Jan. 6, after Mr. Trudeau announced he would be stepping down, Mr. Trump’s language became more radical – “Many people in Canada LOVE being the 51st State” – as if annexation was a fait accompli.

President Donald Trump’s provocative suggestion that Canada might as well be America’s 51st state is absurd, as Canadians know.

But it is precisely this absurdity that garners attention — something Trump understands all too well. To Canadians, such comments are exasperating, but they also highlight a deeper issue: the dysfunction within Canada’s own economic framework, particularly when it comes to interprovincial trade.

As a Canadian, I commend to American readers the desirability of avoiding unnecessary friction with that country. It is almost impossible to distinguish an English-speaking Canadian (as opposed to French Canadians — a little over 20 percent of Canadians), from an American from a northern state.

The audible difference is the pronunciation of a few words with the vowels ‘o’ and ‘u’ together in them such as about, and house. That is the cultural barrier between the two countries which has historically been as conveniently penetrable as our actual border. The United States-Canada frontier has not been crossed in either direction by hostile forces for more than 200 years, since the War of 1812.

With Trudeau hanging on as PM Canada can expect a rough ride.

As Premier Doug Ford prepares to trigger a provincial election on Wednesday, opposition parties are raising concerns about his two planned trips to Washington D.C. during the campaign, calling them “explicitly partisan” and an inappropriate use of taxpayer funds.

The moment the Ontario legislature is dissolved and an election is called, the government enters caretaker mode – a long-standing convention that prevents a political party from using taxpayer resources for partisan purposes during an election campaign.

Weren’t they accusing Danielle Smith of not being a team player last week?