A thank-you across the border, from the rich to the rich

Chantal Sundaram writes thank-you cards to Trump on behalf of Canada's 1% and the politicians that represent them.

 

As Canadians cancel travel to the US and scramble to “Buy Canadian” in response to Trump's attacks, we should give a thought to who this is helping or hurting.

Not only are those most hurt by retaliatory tariffs ordinary people across the border, who will see their already meager resources take a hit, those who will be most rewarded by a US boycott strategy will be the rich and powerful people on this side.

Despite the best of intentions, pro-Canada strategies will strengthen our own mini-Trumps and their enablers right here at home. And while they boost their own fortunes in the trade war, we lose in the actual war on the politics of hate and the war on working people and the poor.

The following is a list of all the Canadian political and economic leaders who owe a thank-you card to Donald Trump for moving politics to the right in this country.

From a failed PM: thanks for a less disgraceful exit

Yes, Justin was forced to resign. But he got his moment in the sun by addressing Donald publicly for being stupid on tariffs. He may have been fired by his own party, but Justin’s list of fireable offences were committed against the people who live on this side of the border.

He bought a destructive pipeline with taxpayer money; Canada Day was cancelled on his watch and against his will in 2021 by a popular uprising of millions who could not stomach the revelations about Canada’s genocide against Indigenous people. He legislated unions back to work – notably Canada Post, the union that in 1981 forced the federal government to introduce paid maternity and parental leave to all Canadians by a 42-day strike. They were not the only workers to be attacked by Trudeau. Port workers and rail workers were also forced to end strikes by anti-union laws under Trudeau. 

And Trudeau should be remembered as the PM who tolerated a Trump inspired far-right Freedom Convoy occupation of his own state capital for six-weeks in 2022. Finally, Justin invoked the Emergencies Act, first invoked by his father Pierre when it was still called the War Measures Act, a made-in-Canada law aimed at putting down strikes during wartime and then used against Quebec leftists and trade unionists sympathetic to more rights for Quebec in the 70s.

Using the Emergiencies Act seemed to be a response to the Convoy, but in reality it was only enacted after ordinary people started fighting back themselves against the far right, a protest Trudeau feared far more than Convoy hate, and it succeeded in shutting down all popular opposition to the far right on the ground.

But instead of the Trumpian sound of “you’re fired” echoing in his ears, Justin got a slightly more honourable discharge in the eyes of the Canadian public.

From a corrupt premier: “Mine, Baby, Mine”

The next thank-you card comes from Doug Ford, who literally was handed the Ontario election by the tariff war. Ford’s Captain Canada Cape was a super-villain cape that shielded him from attack for his destruction of the best thing about Canada: universal public healthcare. Ford masked himself as a Bizarro-version of Captain Canada while handing over healthcare to predatory private profiteers, piece by piece.

For Ford the tariff war is the gift that keeps on giving. At a mining conference he announced his plan to save the Ontario economy from Trump by speeding up mineral extraction in the notorious “Ring of Fire” in Northern Ontario. He wanted to do it anyway, but now he’s using the tariff war to cut short the environmental assessment process and run roughshod over Indigenous territory with Trump’s same “Drill, Baby, Drill” mantra.

Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation reminds us: "These are not 'Ontario's minerals'; they exist within our territories … The unilateral will of the day's government will not dictate the speed of development on our lands, and continuing to disregard our legal rights serves to reinforce the colonial and racist approach that we have always had to fight against."

But in Trump’s own sinister voice, Ford says: “we’re going to sit down and have a great conversation.” That’s what will pass for Indigenous consent. “We’re all in this together” means Douggie knows best how to exploit Indigenous territory, and he wants to go even faster now.

Doug to Donald: thanks for helping me win an election and sell rapacious mining to the public.

Thanks from all of Canada’s mini-Trumps

Danielle Smith of the United Conservative Party of Alberta is all about “Drill, Baby, Drill” but she’s also pushing her own home-grown and vicious attack on trans people in Alberta. Her party even has their own war on EDI: university and college campuses across Alberta should replace EDI with ABC (“Accessibility Belonging and Community”) erasing the whole notion of redress for historic inequality and oppression.

Francois Legault in Quebec is facing a Supreme Court fight over his Islamophobic law against the Muslim hijab in schools and a union fight over his new law limiting the legal right to strike – but he too got to pose as a tough hero against the tariffs in Quebec.

There are more Canadian mini-Trumps waiting in the wings, and more extreme-right supporters behind them, and all of them will ultimately reap the reward of their fake war with the US.

So, to Trump from all of them: Thanks for making us look less immediately dangerous than you are.

Thanks from the Gouging Grocer

Galen Weston, the Loblaws CEO so recently reviled for his price-fixing, has been given big reprieve by the “Buy Canadian” movement. He became the target of a popular consumer boycott, fuelled by disgust over his treatment of grocery employees during COVID. And if he wasn’t profiteering enough before, just watch his tariff war profiteering.

The “Prepared in Canada” labels in his stores are fake news to draw in the anti-Trump dollar: it’s not even clear what a boycott means in such an intertwined economy. But at least his stores will reap the profit!  

As CUPE National President Mark Hancock said: “Canada’s response cannot simply be ‘Buy Canadian.’ The CEO of Loblaws is still going to be happy to price gouge you on maple syrup while wearing a maple leaf hat.”

Galen to Donald: thanks for making people boycott you instead of me.

Thanks from the Liberal enablers of Trumpism

Trump’s tariff war literally saved the Liberals from a complete rout by the Tories. The question is, should we be thankful for that?

Poilievre’s dream came true when Trump got elected, but it disrupted his political narrative. He was banking on a cross-border solidarity of the far-right, which saw the MAGA movement celebrate the Freedom-Convoy occupation of Ottawa in 2022: a cross-border alliance of anti-vaxxers, transphobes and racists. Then suddenly, the Trump regime made a different calculation with tariffs, based entirely on geopolitics.  

We should celebrate that Poilievre’s “party of the Convoy” has taken a hit. But if it only happened because of a trade war between the rich and their electoral survival mechanisms, how much has it really undermined the far-right narrative in Canada?

Carney and Pollievre have been in lock-step on environmentally destructive policies and militarization: from canceling the carbon tax to calling for unprecedented increases in military spending at the expense of healthcare, education and social programs. Carney is in fact poised to be the sweetener for the bitter pill of a more disastrous climate and military policy than even Poilievre could away with. He is a bankers’ banker, the ultimate representative of the rich and powerful.

The Trudeau Liberals themselves paved the way for Poilievre to rise and push the Tories even more to the right, bringing openly fascist politics closer to federal power than ever. Under Trudeau, there was a 104% increase in deportation of undocumented people following the false promise for regularisation of non-status immigrants in 2021, not to mention the federal cap and attack on international students who were falsely accused of causing the housing crisis. This is a gift to the far right; the whipping up of fear and anger against the wrong targets will only continue under Carney.

And perhaps most alarming, the fight with Trump is allowing Carney to shift the whole political spectrum to the right by hijacking the NDP vote in a dramatic way. While “strategic voting” may always be a debate in elections, the defection of the NDP vote to the Liberals over Trump could be disastrous for the NDP’s survival. And that would not just be a problem for elections: it could narrow the whole political climate on healthcare, public services, immigration, climate change and support for Palestine. In the U.S., the lack of an alternative to two parties of big business is what paved the way for rise of Trump in the first place.  

Even Charlie Angus, former long-time NDP federal MP and contender for the leadership of the federal NDP, wrote his own thank-you card to Trump: “Donald Trump, I’m going to say this once—and I might never say it again—I want to thank you. I want to thank you for bringing Canada together. It took a malignant narcissistic slug like you to make us put aside all our differences—all our regional fights, all our concerns with one another—and realize we actually had to stand up for something better: standing up for the rule of law, for democracy, for decency.”

This kind of thinking is sounding a scary death-knell for the NDP. The left should be saying loudly that we are not all in this together: we weren’t during COVID and we aren’t now.

Mark Carney to Trump: thank you for helping me show that there is no room for the left when Canada is under attack.

True thanks to what unites us

We have the power to resist the politics of hate. That can sometimes include consumer boycotts, as it has against repressive regimes in South Africa, Israel, and companies like Loblaws and Amazon. But we have to be strategic about how our boycott choices are linked to movements for social justice on the ground, and to the right targets.

The Justins and Galens and Carneys want us to forget that we have friends on the other side of the US border. Canadian media that covers anger over the tariffs covers little of the American resistance to ICE deportations and crackdowns, and the protests against racism, sexism, and queer and transphobia by ordinary people. Canadian media doesn't cover the brave response by American trade unionists, including federal employees, to attacks on public sector jobs and services and on democratic institutions.

This is my thank-you card, to all US resisters:  

Hate knows no borders, and neither does resistance and solidarity. Let’s not let the rich divide us.