Trudeau and Trump
PRIME MINISTER’S FINE LINE HAS ROOTS IN MULRONEY-REAGAN ERA
You don’t need a degree in translation to understand that, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau decries fear and division, or embraces Syrian refugees, he has in mind a certain chaotically disruptive, wildly controversial president with combed-over hair, who last Friday introduced a Muslim ban that has rightly put the United States and the rest of the world in an uproar.
The question is whether the Liberal government’s indirect route of calculated dissent will hold, and for how long — particularly as shock and grief, in the aftermath of the massacre Sunday in Sainte-Foy, Quebec, turns to anger.
Six men were murdered while at prayer, apparently targeted because of their Muslim faith. Five were critically wounded. A 27-year-old Quebecer, Alexandre Bissonnette, faces six counts of first-degree murder and five counts of attempted murder. The charges have not been tested in court. According to credible reports Bissonnette is a recent convert to the far right who has, in social media posts, supported Trumpist positions on immigration and refugee policy.
It would be irrational and unfair for Canadians to blame this barbarity on Trump, let alone more broadly on America. Many people are appalling, ignorant bigots, as a glance at the comments section of any news site will show, who don’t become mass murderers. Moreover, Islamophobia was present in Canada and Quebec long before Trump entered politics. We spent the better part of a year talking about it leading up to the 2014 Quebec provincial election.
That doesn’t change the psychological reality, which is that some will look to Trump’s recent inauguration, and his policies, and the timing of the Sainte- Foy massacre, and draw a link.
That is setting aside popular ire that was bound to bubble up in Canada regardless; anger at Trump’s upending of international norms; anger at the imminent collapse of the trilateral North American trading partnership on which Canadian prosperity depends; anger at the end of any sense of foundational continental security; and anger at the sheer recklessness with which the president has moved to smash bone China on all fronts. It’s a recipe for a spike in anti- Americanism unseen in this country, maybe, since the days of Sir John A. Macdonald.
Now: there are sound reasons why Trudeau has taken a deliberate, non- confrontational approach, Liberal instincts notwithstanding. There’s a historical parallel with the 1980s, when prime minister Brian Mulroney trod the tightrope between eco- nomic need and rising Canadian nationalism, spending every ounce of political capital he had in the process.
Mulroney came to power in 1984, four years after Reagan was elected president. On some issues — the environment and how to handle South African apartheid, to name two — their views diverged. On others, such as mutual defence and trade, they agreed. Reagan, a Republican cold warrior derided by critics as a mere former Hollywood actor, was not popular in left-leaning Canada.
But, in contrast with his predecessor, Pierre Trudeau (no disrespect to John Turner, who served briefly between the two), Mulroney made a friend of the president. In 1985 they warbled Irish Eyes together at the Shamrock Summit, sparking much nationalist derision. But Mulroney later quietly badgered Reagan into the Acid Rain Treaty. Then he landed the bilateral free trade agreement that eventually became the North American Free Trade Agreement, the foundation of Canadian job growth for the past quarter century.
Mulroney’s approach to bilateral diplomacy, which Trudeau appears to have borrowed, is to first acknowledge this is the single paramount file for any Canadian prime minister, because the slightest “thickening” of the border can instantly plunge Canada into an economic crisis; and next, to doggedly nurture relationships, not just at the head- of- government level but also the legislative, to advance Canada’s interests.
This was the thinking behind Trudeau’s recent cabinet shuffle, which moved several people — including Chrystia Freeland, now foreign minister, and Andrew Leslie, now her parliamentary secretary — into positions where they can capitalize on U. S. experience and contacts. The strategy can’t begin to work if, as occurred from time to time during the Jean Chrétien era, MPs or the prime minister publicly vent their spleen at American policy.
It’s a difficult balance to strike at the best of times, especially when the president is an ideological adversary. Stephen Harper wasn’t able to pull it off with Barack Obama, which is one reason why the latter never saw fit to approve the Keystone XL pipeline project, Harper’s most important strategic goal while in office. Trudeau and his senior ministers are trying to pull this off now with Trump, and so far have managed to stay off his protectionist radar. There have been no thunderous tweets denouncing Canadian pusillanimity on border security.
The worry is that the strategy can only go so far — because Trump is not Reagan, to state the obvious. If the president continues to veer beyond the caustic and controversial, into the recklessly destructive, he risks making himself universally loathed. If that happens, diplomacy gets checked by rising nationalist fury on this side of the border. And we are, truly, in uncharted territory.