Trump revival already a problem for Canada
Spoiler alert: Joe Biden’s big summit this week is not going to save the world for democracy.
But it will offer a glimpse into just how much the current government in the United States — and even Canada — is spooked by the real prospect of Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
Once upon a time, a U.S.-led summit on democracy would revolve around ways to export Americanstyle values to shakier, less democratic nations abroad. But that was before the siege on Capitol Hill a scant 11 months ago, which vividly demonstrated that democracy denial is now a real, ongoing domestic problem for the United States. Or, as they say in the scary movies, the calls are coming from inside the house.
Events since then, even with a new president in the White House, have only heightened worries about the health of the U.S. democracy. Over the past month, alarm bells have been sounding more regularly in the U.S. media about all the efforts under way to align the electoral system and voting rights for a Trump victory in 2024.
“Trump’s next coup has already begun,” reads the headline on the newest edition of the Atlantic, almost entirely devoted to the real threats to democracy within the United States. “The prospect of this democratic collapse is not remote,” the cover story baldly states.
Canadian officials involved in the preparations for Biden’s democratic summit Thursday and Friday quietly say the Americans are approaching this event with some “humility” about their own democratic problems. The summit, they say, will not simply be an exercise in leaders waving their fingers at other nations for democratic shortfalls — not while the U.S. itself has its own challenges.
Justin Trudeau is due to speak in the virtual event and, like other leaders, will reportedly be putting forward an array of measures by which Canada proposes to do its part to shore up democracy — not just abroad, but at home, as well.
They will reportedly include work already under way on protecting electoral integrity, media freedom and an enhanced emphasis on democracy in the digital space. Canada will also be highlighting what it has done and intends to do in the realm of reconciliation and antiracism policies as pieces of the effort to keep democracy intact. Mélanie Joly, Canada’s new global affairs minister, is due to give closing remarks at one of the opening sessions on the media and democracy.
How Trudeau or any of the other leaders intend to address the Trump question at this summit remains to be seen. It’s unlikely a Canadian prime minister would want to be seen lecturing the United States about its internal politics. But what the former president could do to rattle democracy in his own country is not just a spectator sport for Canada either.
Practically speaking, Trump’s potential revival is already a problem for Canada. It’s made Biden more domestically focused, increasingly protectionist and more worried about the Democrats’ hold on Congress than preserving its friendship with its closest neighbour.
But the idea Trump could return to power through a “coup,” to use the Atlantic’s term, is also very much on the minds of people at high levels in the Trudeau government, aware that, if democracy is that fragile in the United States, it could be imperiled here as well.
The spectacle of this year’s election protests in Canada, complete with slogans imported directly from Trump demonstrations in the U.S., is not forgotten either.
Trudeau himself has talked about the threats to democracy as a problem with roots in cynicism — a belief that everything the government does is either corrupt or incompetent or both.
When people don’t believe government delivers, they lose faith not just in government, but the delivery system itself — democracy. His summit remarks will touch on this theme, officials say.
Last month, shortly after Joly was sworn in as minister, I asked her how much she expected to be preoccupied with the U.S. and its Trump problems in her new job. Joly said it is obviously on Canada’s radar, especially the anxiety, economic and otherwise, that is making U.S. citizens hostile toward government. “The question of the future of democracies is fundamental,” she said.
With more than 100 countries participating in the summit Thursday and Friday, it’s unlikely Trudeau or any leader is going to get a chance to say much beyond platitudes — which have never been all that useful in shoring up democracy.
Besides, it’s not the current president (and summit host) who needs lectures in democracy — it’s the expresident, already the elephant in the room before the event starts.