Jen Gerson: You all owe Doug Ford an apology
Carney doesn't get it — his job is to be our national moral leader, not our senior trade negotiator.
By: Jen Gerson
A lot of people in this country owe Doug Ford an apology.
Not for the way he’s run the Ontario government over the past three terms generally, but rather for the Ronald Reagan ad that prompted a presidential hissy fit specifically. Yeah. Doug Ford is right and all the people carping at him are inevitably going to find themselves — dare I say it — on the wrong side of history.
And by “all the people,” I mean Prime Minister Mark Carney especially, who made an ass of himself, and the entire country, by apologizing for the national sin of transparently running an ad featuring a former U.S. president’s own speech on trade to a U.S. audience.
When the country took a flier on a new Liberal leader at the head of a loathed Liberal government, they did so under the banner of an “elbow’s up” message. I don’t think any of us meant to be jabbing those elbows into fellow Canadians’ eyes, and yet that seems to be the only assertive maneuver outward Carney has mustered since the polling stations closed six months ago.
Look, I’m not going to engage in a great debate about whether Ford’s ad was strategically wise or needlessly provocative. At a minimum, it was a tactical communications success, generating billions of views from both Americans and people around the world, and providing incredible value in earned media in which Ford was invited onto U.S. National broadcasters to make Canada’s case directly to Americans.
Nor is it worth re-hashing the point that the idea of Reagan holds little sway over the corpse of the principles that once constituted a Republican Party. I don’t think there’s anything left in the way of ideology to appeal to in that quarter. It’s transactionalism all the way down, now.
Nor do I think it worth spending much time litigating the difference between Carney’s and Ford’s, let’s say, competing version of events. Ford said he ran the ad by the prime minister prior to airing it in the U.S., and that Carney seemed fine with it. Carney disputes this. For what it’s worth, I’m not inclined to believe either of them, but in this case, I believe Carney less.
All I’m going to note is that at least the ad demonstrated some kind of proof of life. A metaphorical equivalent of a nation taking a picture of itself next to the day’s newspaper.
And the thought of watching our prime minister debase himself with an apology over something as benign as a Canadian premier daring to hold the U.S. president to any kind of ideological standard in the name of our national well-being is, at best, a show of weakness, and at worst, utterly counterproductive. We already took the hit for the ad once Ontario ran it; there’s less than no point in pulling it once it upset Trump. Now we’re just following up the perceived insult with a show of the neck. Ridiculous. Land a punch, take a punch but don’t grovel. Has nobody in the PMO watched Shoresy? Could you, please?
Again, Carney was elected on a specific campaign slogan: “Elbow’s Up.” He dragged his sorry party’s ass back from an incredible 20-point polling deficit because he explicitly understood that the re-election of Donald Trump represented a foundational shift in the Canada-U.S. relationship. His entire schtick was built on the idea that he was the grownup in the room, able to handle The Donald better than the petulant short-panted leader of the Conservatives.
Sure, “Elbows Up” was always pretty lame. It says something not great that the best our national brain trust could come up with was dragging a has-been comic who’s long lived in the U.S. (and still resides there) to pull out a tortured hockey metaphor to the delight of Boomers who think the nostalgia-bait Austin Powers trilogy came out like five years ago. It was on the nose for a prime minister who has also spent the bulk of recent decades living outside the country, and seems radically more at home at an international economics summit. My God, I will not dig into the symbolism of the fact that Carney announced his candidacy to replace Justin Trudeau on the Daily Show, which is a really big deal among people who still have cable TV.
Anyway, my point is that the actual government we’re getting on the Canada-U.S. file is about as close to the campaign advertisement as a drop-shipped Temu Labubu. Or perhaps the Liberals correctly intuited what I did not: that this country’s ruling class doesn’t really want a fight, but merely a kayfabe to keep up the appearance of virtue in the face of tyranny. A show. A rebellion on principle, but one without grit, blood, or teeth.
I think Carney seems to have it about right, or, at least, he says the right things, when he talks about Canada’s own internal issues, especially on productivity and spending. But our dealings with the U.S. since the election have been far from even muscular, much less pointy.
When Trump tells us to jump on fentanyl or border measures, we devote billions in funding we increasingly don’t have to placate the overblown fiction of a crisis. (Not that I have an issue with fighting fentanyl or tightening borders in theory; I just think Canada should preserve the right to determine for itself how much of a problem these things actually are, and to devote resources according to our assessment, not that of a foreign power.) Digital tax pissed the administration off? It’s gone. Counter-tariffs too provocative? Well OK then Donald, you got us.
The only thing Canada seems willing to get sniffy about is our notoriously shit supply managed dairy program. All this, and butter that don’t spread on bread. We stand on guard for thee.
I mean, if an advertisement featuring a speech from Ronald Reagan is too much for the Americans to bear, what the hell is left? Finger guns?
Further, I have no sympathy for the complaint that Canada is meddling in America’s domestic affairs with that ad, either. Coming from a nation that reportedly recently met with Albertan secessionists and even discussed extending loan guarantees — a report that has not been denied by the U.S. administration, the United States, the United Goddamn States, has literally no moral standing to complain about a foreign nation highlighting the words of their own past leaders in a transparent advertisement purchased by the people of Ontario.
Perhaps we all need a little history lesson on the purpose of the Voice of America and, like, the entirety of the CIA.
Apologizing is just an incredible show of weakness, and it suggests to me that Carney himself doesn’t seem to appreciate exactly why he was elected. Hint: It wasn’t to secure a great trade deal with the Americans. It’s possible no such deal can be secured, which is why trashing Ford and arguing about the strategic value of the ad is a pointless endeavour. We may be in a Kobayashi Maru situation here; an unwinnable scenario. If that’s the case, then it’s not clear what kind of provocation or lack thereof can secure any kind of lasting “business certainty.”
Our win condition, then, must be something else entirely; it’s not about maximizing prosperity, but rather, salvaging what of our economy we can while maintaining our national sovereignty.
If a trade deal is predicated on the assumption Canadians and her leaders can be forced into silence and complacency with a mere 10 per cent tariff on non-USMCA compliant goods, that deal was never going to last. The preconditions are not possible. A prime minister doesn’t actually control the premiers, nor the other civic leaders in the country who absolutely will say and do things to offend the living narcissistic shadow person Americans elected to enact their collective worst selves. If it weren’t this offence, it would be the next one. Because the purpose of the exercise is subjugation, not mutual benefit.
And I am subject only to King Charles III, sirs.
A nation is more than just a dot on a GDP bar graph: it’s a moral story that people tell about themselves to themselves. And the role of a prime minister isn’t that of a chief trade negotiator; it’s to embody that story in his actions and deeds. I understand that Carney is in a tight spot; that he’s trying to bide time, manage chaos, and get enough of a deal to fall off the U.S. administration’s radar. Wait for the midterms and hope for the best. It’s not even a bad strategy.
As a citizen, I’m willing to cut him and even the Liberal party quite a lot of slack, given the circumstances. But I am worried. I am worried that we’re being led by a guy who doesn’t seem to totally believe his own campaign rhetoric. Someone who doesn’t quite buy into the notion that our pride is just as important as our wealth. And if that’s not true, if Canada really isn’t worth fighting and making sacrifices for, then why bother playing at all? Bend the knee, give the Americans whatever they want — Ring of Fire mining rights; butter liberalization, fuck it, whatever — and we can all go back to ordering plastic junk on Amazon at .8 on the Greenback instead of .6. That’s what really matters, isn’t it?
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Following the In The Shadows Cabinet of people around Prime Minister is instructive to how things are playing out.
Mr. Bremmer, President of the Eurasia Group predicted long ago that the inflammatory rhetoric of Trump had raised the slumbering nationalist streak of Canadians and that Canadian politicians would take advantage of it by putting up a fight before the election. Mr. Bremmer concluded that he "expected Canada would quietly fold shortly after the vote to ensure that the ongoing negotiations with the US remain functional."
If Ms. Gerson wonders whether Carney really believed in the elbows up narrative of the election campaign, well there's the answer. In fact Carney was removing counter tariffs imposed by Trudeau during the campaign and most of them have been quietly removed since, but not before reeling in a billion or two from Canadians unfortunate enough to buy US goods while the tariffs were still in place.
Canadians settled on a risk averse technocrat to lead us through the wilderness of the Trump Administration, failing to consider that bankers are not hard wired to take chances or stand tall above the bulwarks waiting to become Donald Trump cannon fodder.
The early going seems to justify the old sentiment that the Liberals are great at getting elected, governing...not so much.
Can we stop calling Carney a Conservative PM now also. This budget was just more LPC rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. “Elbows up” my ass!