Life Comes At Canada Fast. Maybe Too Fast This Time

“The Canadians are ridiculous. We don't need to use military force against Canada. The Salvation Army could defeat Canada.” @WallStreetMav

Canada is not a nation to rush into anything. As an example, its government has been ragging the puck since February when Trump told them he was fed up with them bringing six beers to the party but drinking nine. 

For some time it seemed possible for Mark Carney to placate the Liberal blue hairs with the EU card and his jingoistic Elbows Up charade. But the past two weeks have seen Ferris Bueller’s words take on special meaning. “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it,”

And so events are forcing sated, satisfied Canadians to finally look around. Trump plucked Venezuelan presidente Maduro from his palace in Venezuela, the Iranian mullahs are on the brink of a coup. Documents tying Barack Obama to a coup attempt in 2017 have been released. The Democratic VP candidate last November has pulled out of the Minnesota governor’s race because he’s been found at the top of a massive bribery scheme. 

A committed Marxist preaching the warmth of communalism has become mayor of New York City. And Trump, God bless him. is reviving visions of Seward’s Folly by annexing Greenland and controlling the trade lanes in the North Atlantic. 

In Canada Trudeau’s deputy PM Chrystia Freeland has decamped to Ukraine to advise them on how to collapse their economy as she did Canada’s, leaving Elbows Up three seats short of the majority Liberals crave. Carney is flying off again to pretend to negotiate with new trade partners. That’s a full docket for two weeks.

But it’s America’s Venezuela dash for cash that has broken the glass on Canadians’ trance. The seizure of the means of Venezuela’s oil production has freaked out the Liberals’ blue-hair base who’ve been assuming Alberta’s petroleum was leverage in the non-existent negotiations with Trump. Many see Venezuela flooding the market again as catastrophic for a country that uses energy to backstop its sputtering economy. 

The realization that Trump might actually launch (gasp) an Ottawa military event to protect the Hemisphere now has gained a foothold among the Canadian ben pensants. This incursion would not feature Bouncy Castles. Needless to say the fainting goats of the Laurentian elite have tried surpassing each other in scenarios where Carney is hauled away by his heels as crack Canadian DEI dragoons get locked in the Commons bathroom. 

The Americans will march down Wellington Street! Panic! “@JeanCharest_Jan 5. The military operation in Venezuela confirms the new U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS), particularly towards the Americas and, therefore, Canada.” Bob Rae, the last Pearsonian left in Canadian Foreign Affairs insists that Canada is on the menu Chez Trump. 

In The Line Jen Gerson takes the temperature of a Canada caught unawares. “Maduro’s extraordinary rendition seems to have hit a real nerve here in Canada among those who have correctly realized that an America that doesn’t need our oil is an America that has the luxury of setting its own trade terms. To be honest, some of this analysis has bordered on the unrealistic, and even hysterical.” 

(While Trump has everyone’s eyes on oil it’s incumbent to note that the Maduro extraction is a checkmate for the Chinese who are buying large tracts of the Americas. It’s also a gotcha to the Russians and their pals in Cuba that their clubhouse on the Caribbean is down for repairs.)

A recent editorial in the Globe&Mail shows peak panic on Parliament Hill. . “We need to prepare for the possibility that the U.S, use military coercion against Canada.” Cry harder. In a broadside of hot leads and overheated logic, the G&M authors see America using duplicitous Alberta as the pathway into an invasion. Not to be outdone, the yellow stain Toronto Star posed, “ After Trump’s capture of Venezuela’s Maduro, does Doug Ford need to watch his back?”

The concept of a military invasion Is hysteria squared. As anyone who knows a quant from a quart can attest, Canada’s debt status means that the U.S. need only recall its auto industry or withdraw its defence capabilities to bring Canada on bended knee. No tanks needed. Sign the paper.. Over by dinnertime.

To forestall Carney being captured by Trump, Team Elbows Up announced its sudden focus on foreign money laundering and political interference by the Chinese and others. Yet Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree proposes to weaken foreign registry mandated by Parliament 19 months ago with penalties as modest as $50 fines, and that cash payments to foreign agents remain hidden: “Regulations would allow certain information not to be published,” he told reporters.

At the same time a former New York-based employee of TD Bank N.A, Wilfredo Aquino, pleaded guilty to facilitating a money-laundering network moving hundreds of millions of dollars through TD Bank accounts. This coming on the heels of TD Bank being fined $3B US for facilitating money laundering.

But what’s a few billion between neighbours? Once again it’d be champagne dreams and caviar wishes for the gourmets running Canada. If only they click their heels three times and say, “Send him home” Trump will be impeached or assassinated or sent to Mars by Elon Musk— allowing Carney to bring Greta Thunberg into his cabinet for business as usual. 

But in their secret hearts they must know time’s up. This new geopolitics has no time for a nation that mailed it in for a decade under Trudeau the Younger (and Stupider). The bill has come due ,and Trump means to collect.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700