Options Dwindling: Canada Continues To Resist Trump's Intervention

“The big moment on “Intervention” is when family and friends of the alcoholic or drug addict confront him or her… The addicts are usually in full blossom, drunk or high or on the nod. “What the hell . . . ?” they’ll say, looking around at their parents, their brothers and sisters, their wives or husbands, all together, seated in a semicircle.

The subjects of the intervention already feel ambushed, so steps are taken to keep them from feeling attacked as well. It’s easy to lose one’s temper in this situation…. The heartiest of the (subjects)  are revisited several years down the line, still sober, many with jobs now, and children. “All that time I wasted,” they say. “What on earth was I thinking?”— David Sedaris Intervention

Canadians may not know it, but they are in the midst of an intervention. If they do think about confrontation at all they probably imagine they are the ones confronting the addict in Donald Trump. But the reality is that Elbows Up is the one saying “What the hell?…” as their friends prepare to give them a reality sandwich. 

Sure, January 2026 new car sales in Canada fell by 18.2 percent over last year. Its real estate bubble is about to blow. China owns Canada's only antimony mine. The PM is on “holiday” in Europe, visiting his money. That’s no reason for the turncoats administering this session turning being Canada’s friends for a long, long time.

The intervention began in the 2024 Americans Thanksgiving weekend when Pippy Bright Stockings, aka Justin Trudeau, and his finance frau Chrystia Freeland were summoned to newly re-elected POTUS Donald Trump. They arrived at Mar A Lago “in full blossom, drunk or high or on the nod”. Everyone smiled at them. Life seemed grand, despite the Libs’ killer polling. 

The “Time’s Up” intervention that then followed from Trump was rude. Like all addicts, Canada’s Laurentian elite reacted with shock to being confronted. “Us? You’re being harsh with your best buddies?” Yes, he was. After a decade of Trudeau smashing the furniture and generations of Canadian liberals taking America for granted, Trump was calling their bluff on tariffs. And on things like the RCMP being so difficult to work with in stopping organized crime that American agencies have stopped sharing intelligence with them.

As recently as Wednesday, VP J.D.Vance was in Michigan repeating the Canada-as-mooch theme. Now, intervention experts will tell you Trump’s approach of suggesting Canada become the 51st state and Trudeau be called Governor was a tad unsubtle. But Trump understood that Canada’s addiction was deep. Its social-progressive kabuki was no longer acceptable to the 77 million Americans who’d elected him.

Having China place surveillance camps on the northern border while laundering its dirty money from shipping fentanyl— all while Canada went ho-hum— is unacceptable. Importing radicals to foment terrorism in North America is a no-go. So is “I will pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today” approach to defence spending. Trump drew the line at having pet industries like dairy and forestry exempted from trade talks any longer. In Orange Man’s impeccable phrase, “They had no cards to play”. Shock therapy was needed.

The denial was such that the Liberals immediately joined China in declaring tariff war on the U.S. They manufactured a compromise deal to switch from tainted Trudeau to banker-to-the-world Mark Carney. Not switch policies, mind you. No, Carney created the Elbows Up defiance. Liker a pee in a blue suit, it gave Elbows Up a warm feeling and no one else noticed.

Having switched from meth to heroin, Canadians then gave Carney a massive mandate to reject its neighbour’s sober advice. Anyone attempting to reduce the tension by talking to the American administration— hello, Danielle Smith— was a “traitor”, according to Ontario’s Doug Ford. 

We remain in this standoff 18 months later. Judging by polls showing Liberals with huge lead in polls, denial reigns. Like the defiance of an addict who thinks he can handle his problem, Canada now lives by the methadone of Carney’s Davos speech urging that he lead a coalition of middle-ranked powers to counter Trump. Or suggestions from France that Canada become the 28th EU member.

 He seeks approval for the ruling class’s addiction by co-opting the moribund NDP. The delusion is underpinned by the “threat” of a Trump invasion of Canada. 

The denialist behaviour is assisted by Canada’s purchased media party that hammers Trump Derangement Syndrome on a daily basis, diverting attention from the Madness of King Justin or Carney’s Carnival. It has made Carney acceptable by maklng Trump a pariah in Canada. The mission of the co-opted press is to pretend that the current Canada of performative insanity is the same nation handed to Trudeau by Stephen Harper. The Canada of the Vancouver Olympics, the Confederation Year, the WW II heroes. 

Now it’s the nation of Diversity®, a crab boil of cultures, languages and, in Gad Saad’s words, suicidal empathy. Its sensibilities are victimization, guilt and land acknowledgements. The arbiters of this society are CBC and CTV, the Toronto Star and Globe & Mail, a hundred preposterous cultural outlets funded by government. And American mainstream culture.

It celebrates “Ben Bogart (they/them) a neurodivergent non-binary agender adisciplinary artist who enjoys tickling various mosses, can eat a lemon slice including peel without flinching, and if they had to be a bird would love to be a swallow”. He works where? On the “unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̍əm (Musqueam), Sk̠wx̠wú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil- Waututh) First Peoples, also known as Vancouver’.

Like an addict Canada lives day to day, month to month, in fear of being found out for the nation Trump said it was. If that means 84,000 jobs lost in the month of February the glee-club in the press says that’s just the price of being free. If that means normalizing a partnership with China or reading land acknowledgements before meetings of the book club it’s okay.

If unemployment hits 1.5 million Canadians or shares of subprime lender Goeasy fall 50 percent on guidance of surging loan defaults and write downs, it’s the trade-off to keep milk at $6 a litre. If citizens are facing an average emergency-room wait time of 21 hours, you’re fighting Trump so you’re going to break a few eggs.

None of this is Carney’s fault, of course. Or so says the addicted Elbows Up media chorus. Even though his mandate has little support in polls of Canadians under 50 years of age. Or Stats Canada reports that the total exit in capital for 2025’s second quarter was $43.7 billion—a similar outflow from the first quarter. Or, businesses across the country hitting the pause button on everything pending CUSMA’s first major review in July 2026.

For the moment, Carney is King. of the quivering masses. The question for Canada is, will it be an addict that never gets off the junk or will it be among the lucky ones who later reflect, “What on earth was I thinking?”

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