Like it or not, we need to welcome Trump
Petitions seeking to bar our neighbour’s duly elected leader are unnecessary
Last week, Donald Trump suddenly discovered he didn’t like the American embassy in London and cancelled a state visit there.
He claimed to be upset that Barack Obama had sold the previous embassy “for peanuts” (never mind the deal was done by the George W. Bush administration) but his decision to stay home was really a victory for Britons who promised mass demonstrations if the U.S. president set foot in London.
Prime Minister Theresa May didn’t have to rescind an invitation, her government didn’t have to ban him from the country and the message was received.
The same message is coming from this country.
In June, Trump is scheduled to make his first visit to Canada as president at a G7 summit.
We know what the majority of Canadians think about the U.S. president, but various attempts to keep him out of this country are misguided.
When his first year in office was officially marked Saturday, Trump became the first president in 40 years to spend his first 12 months in the White House without crossing the 49th parallel.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has formally invited Trump to visit Canada, but we can rest assured there will never be an Obama-style wave to supporters from Parliament Hill or a walk-through of the Byward Market and a stop for a beaver tail from Trump.
Official Washington knows he could not land in Ottawa without tens of thousands of raucous anti-Trump demonstrators flooding the streets. There is no benefit for Trudeau in that.
Perhaps buoyed by the U.K. victory, the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression this week launched a tone-deaf petition to bar Trump from the Quebec summit.
A Council of Canadians petition demanding the same had about 12,000 signatures by midday Thursday.
An Alberta woman, Joy Gerwien, garnered almost 6,000 signatures on a January 2017, petition seeking to bar Trump from Canada and even when Trump was merely the front-runner for the Republican nomination in late 2015 Burnaby NDP MP Kennedy Stewart petitioned to keep him out of the country because his campaign vow to keep Muslims out of his country would be considered a hate speech crime here. These efforts are all wrong. We know what we think of Trump, but the Angus Reid Institute offered a timely reminder Thursday.
It found seven-in-10 Canadians had a negative view of Trump’s first year in office with a mere 13 per cent offering a positive view.
Our view of the president has worsened since the same questions were posed a year ago and 77 per cent report being pessimistic and worried about Trump’s remaining three years.
CJFE quickly dropped its petition after the loud and ubiquitous protest over an organization promoting journalistic freedom of expression pushing to censor the appearance of a G7 leader.
In a move to further champion freedom of expression, the organization put out a statement explaining its motives — then promptly deleted it.
CJFE communications co-ordinator Kevin Metcalfe told me the organization regrets the petition and just wants to move on.
But he pointed out dozens, if not hundreds, of Canadians are turned back at the U.S. border each day, and no one considers that censorious.
And he points out Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland is barred from Russia, a move not seen as censorship but rather a political dispute.
The COC called Trump racist (check), misogynist (check), vulgar (check) and dangerous (check). Its petition says his words and actions are not welcome here.
COC political director Brent Patterson says the petition is there to provide a forum for Canadians to reject Trump’s racism, show he is not welcome here and to encourage Trudeau to “move past being unwilling to ‘opine’ about racism.”
We may be regularly disgusted by Trump, but he is the duly-elected leader of our neighbour and our most important trade and security partner.
He is a G7 leader. Vladimir Putin was booted from the then G8 after he invaded and annexed the Crimea so until Trump is convicted of a war crime, another felony or invades Mexico, he remains a key leader in the summit and eligible to enter this country.
There will be no opportunity to show our disdain in the hermetically-sealed G7 Charlevoix region. It is also highly unlikely that Trump will ever allow a show of that animosity in a Canadian urban centre.
It appears the message has been sent without any over-the-top move to bar a neighbour, no matter how “unruly” — to use Trudeau’s word — he may be.
Tim Harper writes on national affairs. tjharper77@gmail.com, Twitter: @nutgraf1