OTTAWA — It’s the world’s most awkward breakup.
More than a year after U.S. President Donald Trump casually joked about absorbing Canada and repeatedly threatened debilitating tariffs on its goods, many Canadians are convinced their former pals to the south have lost the plot.
New results from The POLITICO Poll suggest a lasting chill has settled over the world’s former bosom buddies. Americans are rosy as ever about their northern neighbors, but Canadians don’t share the love.
Their message to America: It’s not us, it’s you.
Canadians don’t see Trump’s America as merely an annoyance, the survey found. They consider the superpower next door the world’s greatest threat to peacetime.
I think many Canadians are simply fed up with the charade that America is our friend. They never have been. Not under any President. Trump might be completely inept and therefore making it obvious, but America has always considered Canada to be theirs. Only an independent country so long as we toe their line. We must always support them and come to their aid but may never surpass them in any way. For that we must always try to keep a friendly posture so that they have no “excuse” to invade us.
Of course that is all about government. There are many individual people who might like Canadians. Be family. Be friends. Doesn’t change the nature of their government though. It truly believes that the world is theirs to do with as they wish and Canada is just a small country in that equation. America is and always has been the country that many people recognize Russia or China to be. We have to find a way to live with them but it would be a huge mistake to go back to thinking that they are actually friends or even allies.