U.S. election: Canada hopes for the best, plans for the worst

The relationship between Canada and the United States has been the subject of many interesting sayings and axioms over the years.

Justin Trudeau’s father, in a speech to the Washington Press Club in 1969, said: “Living next to you in some ways is like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”

Another saying: “When the U.S. sneezes, the world catches cold.” That one was customized by countries around the world who substituted their name for the world — i.e. Canada, UK, China all catch cold when Washington sneezes.

When these truisms were invented, they were undeniably true of the entire world, because America really was “the leader of the free world” by most estimates. That is less true now since Donald Trump has pulled his country off the world stage to a large extent. But it’s still very much true for Canada, and we are about to see what that might mean.

An alarming number of credible sources and experts are warning that the fallout from this week’s presidential election could be extreme, even violently chaotic.

Former Trump adviser John Bolton said: “Trump has said he can’t lose unless there’s fraud, and that’s a very troubling statement ... I do think there could be turmoil if he thinks confusion and chaos can help him hang on. I think there’s every prospect he’ll engage in it.”

Former Canadian ambassador David McNaughton put it this way: “I’m quite concerned about the divisions that exist within American society that have been exacerbated over the last several years. My concern, if it was uncertain or unclear as to who had won, would be that some of the people who are enemies of Canada and the United States would take the opportunity of uncertainty or chaos in the U.S. to make mischief ... And that’s a real security concern for us.”

Canadians, apparently, agree. In a recent Ipsos poll done for Global News, 70 per cent of respondents said a Biden presidency would be good for Canada, while 22 per cent favoured Trump.

But 60 per cent said they are worried about the potential for violence if Trump loses.

Canada is planning for all eventualities. Trudeau said Ottawa is hoping for a clear result on election night, but preparing for “disruptions” if that doesn’t happen. Trudeau’s tone makes sense — hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

Thankfully, Canada will emerge from the first Trump presidency having dodged serious damage. Thomas Juneau, associate professor of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa, put it this way in a Global News interview: “If there is one thing that I think Canadians should know of the last four years, it’s that we have managed to avoid significant damage ... We’ve managed to successfully mitigate what could have been far worse in terms of the impact on Canada of a Trump presidency.”

What can we expect if Trump wins a second term? Bessma Momani, senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance and Innovation, has this stark assessment: “A second-term presidency can also mean one is more forceful because it’s the lastterm presidency,” she told Global. “We may, in fact, see Trump take this as an opportunity to enact many of the very controversial policies that he thought he couldn’t get away with in the first term. So it is a scary time ...” Amen to that.