Trudeau team enabling Trump administration

PM, staff allowing Canada to be used as political cover

The U.S. election of Donald Trump as president has posed a daunting challenge for leaders around the world who have had to balance respect for an office against serious concerns about the man occupying it. But Justin Trudeau and his inner circle have gone too far in cultivating and legitimizing the worst elements of Trump’s regime.

Over the past week, the U.S. media took notice of the relationship between Trudeau’s principal secretary, Gerald Butts, and Trump’s (now former) chief strategist, Steve Bannon. And both the nature of that relationship and the lack of a response from the Liberals should raise serious concerns for Canadians.

Bannon has been working for years on stoking U.S. nationalism and its racist undercurrents, both through Breitbart News and through his role advising Trump.

But on his way out of the White House, he discussed what he saw as a friendship with Butts, including regular conversations in which Trudeau’s right-hand man had provided him with political advice to boost Trump’s standing.

The Liberals’ chief adviser has rarely been shy about engaging in public debates where he’s seen some basis for dispute. But he did nothing to challenge Bannon’s account.

And the relationship between Butts and Bannon — like one between Trudeau’s chief of staff, Katie Telford, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner — isn’t an isolated example. Instead, it reflects an overall calculation on Trudeau’s part in handling Canada’s relationship with the U.S.

Trudeau has consistently refused to respond directly to even the most destructive actions of Trump’s administration. At most, he’s issued vague generalities — such as a statement following Charlottesville’s violent neo-Nazi rally which made no reference to the participants, nor the president who repeatedly defended them.

Lest that be seen as inevitable, several European leaders have made some effort to educate Trump personally on issues where his ignorance has been especially damaging.

And when he’s refused to listen, they haven’t been shy about publicly working around him. (Given Trump’s unpredictability, that would be a sound strategy even if there weren’t outstanding disagreements over fundamental principles.)

Now, the U.S. business sector is starting to do the same. Last week’s mass resignation of corporate leaders from presidential advisory groups in the wake of Trump’s minimization of bigotry sent a clear signal that they were prepared to draw a line when faced with unacceptable presidential conduct.

In contrast, Canada’s representatives spent the same week sitting down with Trump’s team for what looks to be a futile attempt to renegotiate NAFTA.

What’s more, even Trump’s White House itself has recoiled against some of what Butts is implicitly protecting. While there have been conflicting reports as to the circumstances of Bannon’s departure, all indications are that it was at best a mutual split — with Trump himself deciding that Bannon wasn’t worth defending.

Needless to say, if Canada wants to be treated as an honest broker in the world, it can’t acquiesce in the actions and views of Bannon and his followers — particularly past the point where even Trump himself has said “enough.”

Unfortunately, Trudeau and Butts have made the choice to keep doing so. They’ve allowed Canada to be used as political cover for Bannon and Trump, serving as the prime example of a self-proclaimed progressive government willing to go along to get along. And they’ve shared political advice to help keep Trump’s toxic administration in power.

All of which means that Canadians who are rightly concerned about Trump should cast a critical eye on a Liberal government working to enable him — and work on building a genuinely progressive alternative at home.