TORONTO — Canada’s government is melting down at the worst possible moment.
The country is girding for the return of Donald Trump, who many here see as an existential threat to Canada’s security. He has threatened to slap 25 percent tariffs on Canadian goods, levies that could crush the economy of a country that sends nearly 80 percent of its exports to its southern neighbor.
And he has taken to mocking embattled Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as the “governor” of the “great state of Canada” in middle-of-the-night social media posts that officials here have sought to cast as lighthearted ribbing but others view as not-so-neighborly and not-so-funny. On Christmas, he said he’d pitched hockey great Wayne Gretzky on becoming Canada’s next prime minister.
Mr. Wonderful — as he likes to call himself — gets a lot of air-time, cast as the heartless a–hole on “Shark Tank.” But it’s Kevin O’Leary, the clear-eyed dealmaker who I need to meet, to explain why he’s backing a $70-billion AI data centre industrial park near Grande Prairie in northwest Alberta.
An Indiana man convicted of storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 with his mother has reportedly applied for asylum in Canada — and is already living there, apparently — after failing to report to prison over the summer to serve his 
Another year around the Sun is drawing to a close and keeping with what has become the Western Standard tradition, I am honored to write my year end synopsis for 2024 and my thoughts looking ahead to 2025.
