I’ve been writing for American online magazines for over a decade now. One of the critical comments I occasionally receive has to do with the fact that I am Canadian. What right, some of my detractors seem to think, does a Canadian have to meddle in American culture and politics? I usually respond in two ways. (1) I am fascinated by the U.S. and have studied its history for some considerable time. And (2), America is like a great ocean liner and Canada is like a kayak paddling beside it; if America founders, the kayak goes down in its vortex. What happens to America happens to us, and this explains my concern.
Recently, I’ve come to understand there is a third, equally compelling reason for my interest and, indeed, preoccupation with the United States, which is that I’ve begun to feel more American than Canadian with every passing day. In point of fact, I feel strongly that I have been betrayed by my country—as patriotic Americans would be betrayed by the election of Joe Biden and the ascendancy of a criminal organization like the Democratic Party. The difference is that America is still a country in which a loyal and vigorous leader like Donald Trump can rise to prominence, and Canada is not.
Of course, there are similarities between the two countries. The Left is a powerful and destructive force in both. The media on either side of the border is irretrievably corrupt; in the U.S. it is the propaganda arm of the Democrats whereas in Canada the media has been bought and paid for by the Left-oriented Liberal Party with a so-called “bailout” gift of $595 million. (The keen difference is that many, perhaps most Americans know their media is biased to the point of complete degradation but the vast majority of Canadians continue to trust their Pravda doppelgängers.) In the U.S. we have Joe Biden and Kamala Harris; in Canada we have Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland, political clones of the American duo, having adopted the mendacious slogan “Build Back Better.” The quartet envisions a totalitarian future beginning with wealth-distribution and energy dependence and ending with top-down despotic control by a one-party governing elite. Canada is almost there—some would say it’s already there. By political analogy, if one could transpose that portion of the U.S. that votes Democrat, one gets Canada.
But once again, the crucial difference is Donald Trump and what he represents—a president who puts his country first; brings back outsourced jobs and industries; lowers taxes; cuts stifling regulations; withdraws from wrongheaded, utterly useless and economy-killing climate accords; rationalizes immigration protocols; defends the nation’s borders; and revives the energy sector. In Canada, we have a Prime Minister who regards his country as possessing no “core identity”; presides over ballooning unemployment; raises taxes and raises them again with a crushing carbon tax; increases economy-strangling regulations; believes in the global warming hornswoggle, signing on to the Paris Climate Agreement; does not police key entry points into the country and furthers unvetted immigration; and enacts policies to annihilate the energy sector, particular in Canada’s energy breadbasket in the province of Alberta, in favor of an unworkable and crony-profiteering “renewable” infrastructure.
Trump is suspicious of and resistant to a hostile rogue actor like Communist China, imposing tariffs on Chinese goods and repatriating manufacturing; Trudeau has praised its “basic dictatorship,” contributed $838,000 to the Wuhan Virology Institute, and operated as a close, de facto ally of that despicable nation. Trump is fighting the unconstitutional COVID lockdown in blue states; Trudeau wants to keep the country closed. Trump wants to strengthen a vibrant market economy. Trudeau wants to impose a socialist dystopia upon a once prosperous nation.
The upshot is that I no longer feel Canadian. I am ashamed of a country that votes preponderantly Left, elects a cynical and autocratic nonentity like Justin Trudeau to take the country further down the road to socialism, regards itself as morally superior to a supposedly crass and huckstering U.S., and whose greatest “virtue” is that it gladly embraces programs of social conditioning—or as Tucker Carlson said of inveterate mask wearers and lockdown fanatics, “obedience training.”
True, the U.S. twice elected an intellectually impoverished, deceitful and anti-American socialist scammer like Barack Obama, but appears to have learned its lesson. Otherwise one cannot explain the 2016 victory of Trump. Canada, however, is learn-proof. We have no one even remotely resembling Donald Trump on the political scene today; the few who would have been inspired by Trump, like failed Conservative leadership candidate Derek Sloan or Maxime Bernier, leader of the People’s Party of Canada, have been rejected, demonized and cast into outer darkness.
America now has a fateful decision to make, and we hope it chooses wisely, remembering its republican tradition. Canada for its part appears to have forgotten its founding principles, as adumbrated by Canada’s great conservative thinker George Grant in Lament for a Nation: love of country, the rule of law, civil responsibility, an enduring moral order, freedom of speech, economic prudence, and restraint upon the sweeping exercise of government authority.
Indeed, Canada’s destiny was sealed long ago with the current PM’s father, Castro-loving Pierre Trudeau, who passed the Official Languages Act, which exposed the country to the endless acrimonious conflict between French and English speakers and enabled Quebec’s chokehold on the Confederation, adopted the disastrous Multiculturalism Policy in 1971, opening Canada’s borders to ethnic strife and political disarray, and in 1980 enacted the anti-Alberta National Energy Program, which began the attrition of Alberta’s prosperity, the depletion of Canada’s Treasury, and prefaced the costly, ineffective and ultimately unsustainable catastrophe-in-the-making of replacement wind, solar, biomass and battery.
Should Trump be re-elected, retain the Senate and win the House, there would be limitless hope for the country. But irrespective of who triumphs in our next federal election, Canada has no future to speak of. Trump can Make America Great Again. Canada can never be made great again. It’s over here. Salient political analysis can only be an autopsy.
The next criticism I expect to receive is: Why, then, do I stay in this cultural wasteland and politically desolate country? The answer is: There are constraining reasons beyond our immediate control. But once circumstances permit, and should Trump be elected, as I am confident he will, in defiance of the highly suspect, Democrat-weighted polls, my wife and I are seriously thinking of emigrating, very likely to the United States.
I wish you well.
Editor’s Note: Want to support PJ Media so we can continue telling the truth about the 2020 election? Join PJ Media VIP TODAY and use the promo code LAWANDORDER to get 25% off your VIP membership.
David Solway’s latest book is Notes from a Derelict Culture, Black House, London, 2019.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member