Dispatch from the Front Lines: The cordite-scented unity afterglow won't last

It never does.

Photo from Twitter, exact source unknown.

We’ve got a lot to talk about in the dispatch today, but we’ve also got some housekeeping, so let’s get through this as fast as we can, eh?

First of all, as always, check out the latest episode of The Line Podcast. Jen confesses to her intense rage and Matt suggests that Canada needs to assemble a strategic reserve of bureaucrats who are too rude to work nicely with others (but might actually be good at solving our problems).

And also, check out last week’s episode of On The Line, Matt Gurney spoke with Jamie Carroll of Carroll & Co., for a conversation about the Liberal Party of Canada now that Mark Carney has secured a majority government, and Gregory Jack from Ipsos, for a quick check in on what Canadians want the PM and his new majority to stay focused on.

Also! We will not release an On The Line this week. Instead, on Tuesday evening, we’ll be doing a livestream on YouTube. We haven’t done one in a long time, they’re a lot of fun, and it’ll be another chance to plug our fundraiser! So join us. Details to come on Tuesday.

Speaking of our fundraiser! This is Day Five, and we are more than half way to our daily goal. We need a few thousand more by midnight tonight. If you can help us, please do. It’s the only way outlets like us, that totally reject accept government money, can fight without our hands tied behind our back.

And now, on with the dispatch.

---

Your Line editors have noted with horror, but also resignation, yet another act of political violence in the United States. On Saturday night, in Washington, D.C., the president, the first lady, the vice president, much of the cabinet and most of the capital press corps had gathered for the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, a gala put on by the D.C. media and typically attended by the president. What is normally a night of good-natured joking and roasting was barely underway when an armed man — initial reports suggest he was anti-Trump and was hoping to kill administration officials — tried to get through the security perimeter and shot a law enforcement officer. (The officer was saved by their ballistic vest and is reported to be in good condition.)

The entire event was thrown into chaos, with the president and other VIPs whisked away to safety as cameras rolled, capturing the whole thing. Eventually, the entire affair was cancelled, and the president wrapped the evening with an unusually gracious, if typically rambling, press conference at the White House.

We would love to tell you that we were surprised by this, but we aren’t. And not just because this is the third attempt on President Donald Trump’s life, but because this is one of those worrying signs we keep seeing about the growing threat of political violence in the United States. Many Americans seem obsessed with keeping a tally of which side is responsible. We suppose we’re far enough away to be immune from that temptation. We invite our commenters to join us in that immunity. A listing of victims on both sides won’t lead anywhere, nor change a single mind.

Perhaps the only substantive comment we can offer is how sick we are of seeing the faux sentimentality that often befalls America after these incidents. This is perhaps best manifested by an article in Politico, which notes how the event and the president’s remarks afterward brought a polarized Washington together.

Forgive us, but … America does not have a problem coming together after a catastrophe. They’re actually really good at that, probably because of all the practice they’ve had. America struggles at staying sane after the immediate unifying afterglow of some deranged act of violence has faded, and that only takes a day or two. America is also chronically useless at meaningfully grappling with the root causes of its extremely high baseline violent crime rate relative to other Western countries. This is only becoming more painfully obvious next to its deeply polarized political culture.

There is nothing about these kinds of incidents in America that is surprising. Indeed, as we’ve previously noted, it’s really only surprising that we see as few of them as we do. If you want to impress us, American neighbours, maybe focus more on getting ahead of these things before they happen, not just rallying after they already have.

---

Next up, Justin Trudeau took time out from partying with influencers last week to make an appearance at a CNBC event in Singapore, where he unburdened himself of his deep thoughts on economic coercion. In particular, he related a story about how, early in his time as prime minister, the Bombardier C-series jet was being pushed out of the market by pressure from both Airbus and Boeing. The effect, Trudeau said, was to drive Canada into the arms of the Chinese, who were more than happy to drive up with “a dump truck full of money” to buy Bombardier. As he tells the story, it was only after he intervened with Macron, Merkel, and Trump at a G7 summit in Sicily that Airbus bought the C-series.

This is not the first time Trudeau has put himself out there as a sort of freelance opinionator on global issues since his departure from politics early last year. In January, he brought his girlfriend Katy Perry to the annual gathering of the globalist elite in Davos, where he delivered a speech on the virtues of soft power. This followed his quasi-official luncheon (also with Perry) with the former prime minister of Japan and his wife back in December.

So let’s put this directly: Justin, what are you doing?

As we’ve said repeatedly here at The Line, we would have been more than happy to never mention Justin Trudeau again once he was done with politics and (we had hoped) no longer in any position to do deliberate and explicit damage to the country. But he’s out there talking, so here we are.

Let’s briefly review the situation. By the time Trudeau left office, Canada’s relationship with the United States was in a ditch, in part because of his smarmy habit of negging Donald Trump. Our relationship with India had collapsed entirely over the Hardeep Singh Nijjar affair. Relations with China had been in a deep freeze since the Meng Wanzhou detention. Mexico was annoyed at our shifty and underhanded approach to trade negotiations. Trudeau had decided a G7 summit was the place to lecture Italian leader Giorgia Meloni over her government’s stance on LGBTQ+ rights, something that made him (and Canada) a laughingstock in the Italian press. Canada’s NATO allies had spent years watching us underfund our own defence commitments while lecturing others about the importance of the rules-based international order. A quarter century of national consensus on immigration was destroyed overnight by his government’s decision to admit pretty much anyone. The fiscal situation he left behind was, depending on your preferred metric, somewhere between dire and catastrophic.

Do we need to go on? Because we could, for pages.

On top of all that, there is the Bombardier story itself. Because the other thing that happened during Trudeau’s tenure was that the C-Series program that he was in Asia boasting about saving was eventually absorbed entirely into Airbus and rebranded as the A220. Bombardier actually exited the commercial aviation business. So, the “save” was real, in the narrow sense that Quebec jobs were preserved and a Canadian-designed aircraft is still in the air. But the C-Series is an Airbus product now. Make of that what you will.

Mark Carney is currently trying to do something quite difficult: repair and rebuild all of these relationships simultaneously; manage an existential tariff fight with Washington; stand up a more serious approach to defence; all while trying to restore some small degree of fiscal credibility. He is doing this from an extremely weak position thanks to his predecessor. Trudeau’s Singapore speech, with its self-congratulatory framing and breezy advice about economic coercion, does not make this easier. Every time Trudeau pops up to offer Canada’s supposed wisdom to the world, foreign governments (and Canadians, for that matter) are reminded of the decade under which so much of that credibility was squandered.

There’s a well-established tradition in Canadian politics, and in most Westminster democracies, of former leaders stepping back from the public stage. Not disappearing, necessarily, but keeping a low profile, writing memoirs, joining corporate boards, chairing the occasional foundation. The convention exists for good reasons. A sitting prime minister cannot do their job if their predecessor is out there running a parallel foreign policy track from conference stages in Davos or Singapore.

We have no particular objection to Justin Trudeau enjoying his post-political life. If he wants to date Katy Perry, that’s his business. If he wants to turn up at Coachella and be photographed in a crowd full of influencers, we genuinely could not care less. But there is a meaningful difference between living your life publicly and conducting freelance statecraft. The first is harmless. The second, when you are as compromised a figure as Justin Trudeau, is something closer to an ongoing liability. Canada is trying to rebuild. The least Trudeau could do is get out of the way.

---

As we all find ourselves staring down the barrel of the July 1 deadline for a CUSMA review, the U.S.-Canada trade file begins to ramp up rhetorically. Why in this specific moment? Well, we can only begin to guess; but it sure seems like simmering tensions began to eke into public view.

At a Senate Appropriates Committee this week, New Hampshire senator Jeanne Shaheen — who has been in office during a dramatic drop in cross border tourism to her state since began The Troubles — took sharp aim at Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

One of U.S. President Donald Trump’s more, uh, pointed creatures, Lutnick recently summed up Canada’s trade approach by saying we “suck.”
Shaheen was having none of it:

“How does insulting our closest ally and neighbour help the businesses in my state of New Hampshire and states all across this country that are hurting because of the loss of Canadian business and tourism?” she asked.

Lutnick put the blame for the loss of dollars squarely back on us:

“It is outrageous that Canada will not put U.S. spirits on the shelf. It is insulting and disrespectful to America that they won’t even put—” Lutnick began before he was cut off by the Senator who noted, rightly, that Canadians’ decisions to pull American liquor from the shelves was a retaliatory measure, and a direct response to the U.S. president’s near-metronymic habit of both insults and outright threats.

While Sen. Shaheen was, rightly, defending the interests of her American constituents, at least some of us in Canada would like to offer her just a bit of thanks for at least recognizing that fact.

The whole exchange really got us mulling on why dealing with the current U.S. administration feels so tiring and difficult.

The problem is not merely that Trump et al are insulting toward Canada. Who cares if they insult us? Trump insults everybody. It would speak poorly of us if they weren’t insulting us.

We’re a hockey nation. We can take a hit. And some of Trump’s complaints are fair, even if the way he expresses them are non-normative and offside. That’s not the problem.

The problem is that the Trump team is not fighting clean. In an ordinary fight, one side takes a shot, another retaliates; both sides escalate to the point where either one team “wins” — or everybody decides the fight is dumb. Either way, in a healthy dynamic, there is an airing of grievances followed by resolution and repair.

And there are always going to be disagreements, especially between individuals (or nations) that are so closely interconnected. People fight! That’s fine.

But with Team Trump, that’s not how any of this works. The entire admin has taken on Trump’s narcissistic tendencies, and those personality traits are very obvious in how they approach the nation-to-nation relationship.

They take a shot. We retaliate ... and then they act like the victim of our retaliation, as if they have no self-awareness, agency or role in the dynamic they are facilitating. The most powerful nation on earth, and they’re constantly speaking in passive voice, as if they are put upon by the consequences of their own actions. It’s classic DARVO stuff. And it’s maddening.

If you’ve ever been in one of these kinds of relationships, you know how it plays out. This approach prevents meaningful resolution and repair, because we simply cannot trust that the other party is capable of seeing our perspective and coming to a workable compromise in good faith. So the fight festers into a state of mutual contempt; on the Trump side: “how dare the inferior nation offend us? Who do these parasitic supplicants think they are?” which implicitly demands a level of submission Canadians won’t accept. By comparison, on the Canadian side the sentiment is: “What thin-skinned crybabies. If you want to throw a punch, throw a punch. But own it.”

There’s nowhere to go with that dynamic. The conflict calcifies into something far more serious than the underlying disagreements that provoked the fight in the first place.

And now, two months away from a deadline, that’s where we find ourselves. No one really knows whether negotiations have totally stalled, or if conversations are ongoing. There’s news the Americans have demanded concessions to even come to the table, even though the Canadians have noted that concessions have already been granted (notably, the dropping of the Digital Sales Tax.) We’ve got Carney issuing warnings about the “weakness” of our overreliance on America; and noting that Team Canada will be taking no notes from the Americans on how to proceed, here.

Meanwhile, it does look like the U.S. and Mexico are busy hammering out a deal.

We at The Line offer only a few notes of caution. Firstly, we fully expect ample propaganda from both sides as this issue re-enters into the American attention span. We don’t need to be Elbows Up to keep Eyes Open about what we’re being fed, and from whom.

Secondly, we don’t actually expect either side to negotiate in public. And we remain skeptical of any attempts to score political potshots under the guidance that Canada should be laying out its full strategy — presuming we have one — for the betterment of domestic scrutiny or consumption.

It’s simply impossible to know which country has adopted the most effective approach to dealing with Donald Trump on trade at present. Maybe the Mexicans have it right. Maybe the Japanese nailed it. Or, maybe, not playing a rigged game is the only way to win. We probably won’t be able to assess that correctly for years, yet.

And lastly, for the Conservatives specifically, we know domestic politics never sleeps, but this weird attempt to claim that the last election was won by the Liberals because they promised to secure a good deal with the U.S. is totally bizarre. Carney won the last election by openly articulating a generational rupture in the U.S.-Canada relationship, and by successfully presenting himself as the best person to navigate that shift. Carney didn’t seek that rupture, as Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre claimed — Donald Trump did.

Whatever critiques can be fairly levelled at Mark Carney, Canada is responding to the world Donald Trump is trying to remake. Not the other way around. We had a “free trade” deal before Donald Trump took office. How’d that work out? Further, claiming that there is some kind of “free trade” deal on offer that Carney is mucking up is delusional. To say nothing of the fact that this line of attack certainly ain’t widening the Conservative tent.

Anyway, the final point is simply this: we reserve our right to criticize the prime minister and how he responds when we have a better sense of what his plan is, and how well he executes it. Until then, we’re not going to be the Useful Idiots assuming that it’s really the Americans who have Canada’s best interests at heart.

---

A quick final note. The Line has a reputation, and we don’t deny it’s earned, for being a glum place. As we discussed in the latest podcast, we do this deliberately. We think that Canada needs more of this!

But. There are still good news stories. And we want to highlight two of them. They’re related and, sadly, of late very close to our hearts.

First: Alberta is lowering the age for breast cancer screenings. Starting in a year, the age for self-referral will be set at 40, down from 45. In the meantime, the path to a mammogram would be simplified. This is in response to an alarming trend being seen across the world of younger and younger women being diagnosed. Since early detection makes a huge difference, this is an extremely welcome step. We’d like to see it rolled out even faster, but are glad to see it happen at all.

Second, and related: Toronto City Council has just named November 19th as Early Age Onset Cancer Awareness Day. This was brought about by the advocacy of the Colorectal Cancer Resource & Action Network; colon cancer is another cancer that is showing up alarmingly earlier in the population, and is much easier to treat if caught early.

Our comments are simple. First, good. We welcome these steps. We hope to see more of it. And second, to our beloved audience, get yourselves checked. You owe it to your families to never be ambushed by these awful diseases, or any other. Early detection matters. It can save lives. Do yourself and your loved ones a favour and get checked for everything you can. And if you encounter any resistance, go somewhere that’ll take cash and pay for it yourself. Trust us. It beats the alternative.

---

Thanks, everyone. And remember: we’re trying to close out the fifth day of our fundraiser on a winning note. If you liked what you just read, click the little blue button and donate what you can.

---

The Line is Canada’s last, best hope for irreverent commentary. We reject bullshit. We love lively writing. Please consider supporting us by subscribing. Please follow us on social media! Facebook x 2: On The Line Podcast here, and The Line Podcast here. Instagram. Also: TikTok. BlueSky. LinkedIn. Matt’s Twitter. The Line’s Twitter.Jen’s Twitter. Contact us by email: lineeditor@protonmail.com