Diane Francis: Donald Trump would be bad for Canada (but not as bad as Trudeau)
financialpost.comA spate of recent articles in the United States have been speculating about how America will change if Donald Trump is re-elected in 2024. But there will be adverse changes in store for Canada, too.
For decades, the U.S. and Canada have been among each other’s biggest investors, suppliers and customers. But eight years of the Trudeau government has weakened Canada economically, turning it essentially into an autonomous economic region of the United States.
We still have a separate political system, which is, like California and New England, more socially liberal than most American states. But Canada is more dependent on its neighbour than ever before, because the Trudeau government has not shored up the country’s strength, economically or militarily. This has dramatically reduced our geopolitical importance.
What this means is that if a nationalistic and autocratic Trump wins next year, Canada will be merely a supplicant without heft. Trump will likely try to pull out of NATO, even though Congress just passed legislation to prevent this.
If forced to stay in, Trump will demand that Canada meets its spending commitments to the security alliance of two per cent of GDP. Trudeau has stated this will never happen and Ottawa now spends only 1.38 per cent of GDP on defence.
We can also expect Trump to insist that Canada pull its weight in NORAD, the continent’s collective defence arrangement. If Trudeau balks, Washington will send an invoice.
A Trump regime would likely also require Canada to clean up its act in terms of intelligence gathering. The lengthy criminal proceedings against Cameron Ortis, a former high-ranking intelligence official with the RCMP, recently ended and revealed to our allies that Canada has been a
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