Kanadas Konservative können es kaum erwarten, sich Trump zu ergeben

Some key issues from this opinion piece:

>For all the money and privilege he was handed by his parents, Donald Trump’s most valuable inheritance might be his instinctive ability to detect and expose weakness in others. He’s used it to devastating effect on any number of political foes in his own country, from former opponents like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz to his own vice-president, JD Vance. Now, with his threat to impose a 25 per cent tariff on all Canadian exports on his first day back in office, he’s exposing the weakness of Conservatives north of the border as well.
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>The last time Trump came for Canada, savvy countermeasures targeted the constituencies of key allies, like a tariff on bourbon that struck at Senate leader Mitch McConnell’s home state of Kentucky. But this time, rather than aligning behind a “Team Canada” strategy to deal with the threat, Canada’s Conservative premiers and politicians have rushed to the nearest media platform to pledge their fealty to Trump. And if they have to sacrifice the country’s best interests in order to protect the oil and gas industry and harm their political opponents? Well, just watch them.
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>Alberta premier Danielle Smith opened the bidding last night with a social media post declaring that the Trump administration “has valid concerns related to illegal activities at our shared border.” True to form, she blamed the Trudeau government for everything, suggesting that it needed to “work with the incoming administration to resolve these issues immediately.”
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>Former CPC leader Erin O’Toole raised the ante in his own social media offering by suggesting that “first, we should offer to help finance the Keystone XL pipeline.” Ontario premier Doug Ford offered his own take on obsequiousness by placing an American flag in the background of his presser on the tariffs. As Globe and Mail columnist Andrew Coyne asked rhetorically, “Why not put a white flag up while you’re at it?”
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>Pierre Poilievre, meanwhile, decided this was yet another opportunity to advance his pre-existing policy priorities and blame the federal government for everything bad happening in the country. Our economy, he said, “is teetering on the brink of collapse,” and we need to come to terms with our “unprecedented weakness.” As far as negotiating strategies go, this is a new one.
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>But Poilievre isn’t actually interested in negotiating successfully with the Trump administration right now. He’s far more invested in weaponizing the negotiations against his Liberal opponents. “Justin Trudeau must put partisanship aside,” he said in a hilarious moment of unintentional irony, “not just for Team Canada, but for the sake of our people, and fully reverse his liberalization of drugs. Ban them, prosecute those who traffic against them, secure our borders against the illegal importation of fentanyl ingredients.”
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>But this was far from the only bias Poilievre wanted to re-confirm. When pressed about the need for a united front on this issue, he decided it would be better to talk about the importance of the oil and gas sector. “What we actually need to do is stand up for our economy by axing taxes, unleashing free enterprise, and having a massive boom in our energy and resource production.”

Our domestic bickering both provincially and federally has seriously hampered our ability as a nation to respond to larger-scale challenges and threats, and in this case it’s no different. When we do come together we are able to manage these challenges, but given the propensity of some to use these issues to score cheap brownie points from their base supporters, it’s to our detriment becoming more difficult to accomplish.