’Picking flowers, not weeds’

Watch your backs, fellow Canadians: Michael Moore is coming, and he’s after one of our most precious resources.

“There’s no way to avoid it — even Trump knows that in his own clumsy way,” the rabble- rousing though surprisingly congenial filmmaker says over the phone, so confident in its inevitability he doesn’t even need to make his voice sound threatening. “We will have your health- care system. And I don’t think it’ll take another decade.”

All right, granted, Americans not having to go bankrupt because they made the short- sighted choice to get cancer doesn’t technically mean that we won’t still have our own single- payer system: the nice thing about ideas is that even if they are stolen by brute force, everyone still gets to share them. That reality hasn’t quelled Moore’s American conquerer instinct, though. His latest, Where to Invade Next, is a battle plan for cultural pillaging, following the man behind Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/ 11 as he storms the shores of Europe, looking for good ideas to bring back home.

He’s not so much studying these places for lessons as grabbing the ideas that sound the best and skipping along. Italy’s wonderful workers’ policies, for instance, exist in a place that has pretty stagnant growth and a level of youth unemployment that might make you choke on your espresso ( 37.9%, and that is down from its summer peak).

“That’s like saying you shouldn’t look to Silicon Valley for innovation and technology because we had 300-plus mass shootings last year in the United States. You wouldn’t throw out America’s good ideas because we have a disease when it comes to gun violence,” Moore offers in defence.

Regardless of the depth of opinions expressed in Where to Invade Next, the most interesting thing might be that this is the first Michael Moore film in his history that’s being released on an American public that might, in broad strokes, agree with him. An open socialist has a shot at the presidency. People across the spectrum have grown fed up with waiting for things to trickle down to them, and seem increasingly interested in serious change. The ideas Moore explores don’t seem so farfetched, even for America.

“I think the next president, whether it’s Hilary or Bernie, is going to introduce some kind of paid maternity leave. I think we’ll have that fairly soon,” Moore says, when asked which of his bounty of ideas is closes to fruition.

And yes, you read that right: the next president is going to be a Democrat.

“Unless liberals or Democrats stay home by the millions, that’s going to happen: 81 per cent of the people voting this year are either female, people of colour or young adults between the ages of 18 to 35,” he explains. “The Republicans, and especially Donald Trump, have already aggressively alienated all of those groups. The Republican party is the dinosaur party to them.

“Only 19% of the population are white guys over the age of 35,” he adds for emphasis. “When they have their rallies, they’re speaking to a minority.”