Never in all of my 56 years on this planet would I have imagined that Canada’s relationship with the United States of America, our southern neighbour, trading partner, and closest ally, would be fractured to the point that a small town like Meaford has made the decision to temporarily remove the American flag from a public space, yet here we are.
This second term of U.S. President Donald Trump’s has been a very long, often exhausting 20 months, and with more than two years to go, the end of this president’s term feels a frustratingly long time away. In fact, when I began putting some thoughts on paper for this week’s editorial on Monday evening, the ‘Presidential Term Countdown Clock’ (presidentialtermclock.com/) informed me that there were 858 days, 17 hours, 31 minutes, and 33 seconds remaining in his term.
We Canadians have endured much from our neighbour to the south over the past 20 months. Over those months President Trump has suggested many times that Canada should become the 51st state. We have heard constant mocking of our political leaders, often referring to our prime minister as ‘Governor’. We’ve been told by President Trump that Canada is a bad neighbour, the worst of the worst. President Trump has told us that the United States doesn’t need Canada, yet he became angry when Canada walked away from trade negotiations. And of course, President Trump has targeted our economy with unfair and illegal tariffs.
The suggestion that Canada, the closest neighbour and ally of the United States, is a bad neighbour that takes advantage of the much larger nation to the south of us, is of course bluster from a floundering president who constantly spews nonsense.
In past years our differences with our southern neighbour have largely been expressed with playful banter, or some fun with stereotypes – a sibling rivalry of sorts, but those days are clearly behind us… at least for the time being.
It is within this climate that Meaford’s council held a challenging discussion on Monday, as they discussed whether the Municipality of Meaford should continue flying the American flag at Market Square beside Meaford Hall. It was an issue that council clearly grappled with, just as I have grappled with it myself. It was not an issue that council took lightly.
Personally I am of two minds on this issue. I fully appreciate the desire, given the current friction between the current U.S. administration and Canada, to pull the American flag down. It is a natural reaction after two years of threats to our sovereignty, tariff wars, and general disrespect coming from the Oval Office. We didn’t start this silliness, we are only responding to the words and actions of the American president.
On the other hand, we must remember that this current fracture in the relationship between Canada and the United States comes down to the words and actions of one man, President Donald Trump, not the entirety of the American people. Even in his own country, Trump has seen his once significant support collapse, with the most recent polls that I have seen suggesting that barely one-third of Americans currently support Trump and think he is doing a good job, while two-thirds of Americans do not support Trump, his trade wars, or his silly and often offensive social media posts.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford recently suggested that President Trump could kiss his spacious behind, and I have no doubt that many of us, if not most of us, feel the very same way, but does that friction between a rogue American president and our nation warrant the removal of the American flag from public spaces? I’m not so sure. My emotional side says that it should absolutely removed, but my more practical, rational side thinks otherwise.
We have Americans living in Meaford. Some are full-time residents, others own summer homes. We see American tourists visit Meaford from time to time, and the very bay on which we live is part of the much larger Lake Huron, which Canada shares with the United States.
President Trump and his administration have been playing a dangerous game with their closest neighbour and friend. Trump insists that the United States doesn’t need Canada, but given the billions of dollars of trade between our two nations each year, that is clearly not true. The United States does need Canada. They need our aluminum, they need our nickel, they need our critical minerals, they need our crude oil, and they need our potash, to name just a few of the important products for which the United States turns to Canada.
This is a president that re-wrote the trade agreement between the United States, Canada, and Mexico in his first term, only to tear it up in his second term, insisting that Canada has taken advantage of the good ole USA. As our prime minister suggested recently, Mr. Trump’s deals are signed in pencil.
In the most recent trade negotiations, the U.S. Administration attempted to include clauses that would compromise our sovereignty, and control what countries we negotiate with and what languages we use. So Canada walked away, and the American president ramped up his trade war in response.
Economic warfare is still warfare, and it can have devastating effects and can crush industries and communities quickly. But Trump doesn’t care about all of that; like a petulant child, he simply wants his way, and he will whine and cry until he gets it.
Trump and his cronies are offended that many Canadian provinces have pulled American alcohol from store shelves in response to this silly trade war. I can understand the American administration being frustrated by that move, but did they really expect us to just sit back and take whatever hits Trump wanted to dish out? Even if we were to return American booze to the store shelves, I am not so sure that it would mean sales would resume and return to what they were before all of this chaos began. In Saskatchewan, where you can still buy U.S. alcohol, shoppers have spoken with their wallets, and sales are down more than 40 percent compared to last year. Even in typically pro-America Alberta, while you can still purchase American alcohol, sales are down significantly (more than 30 percent), and I suspect if Ontario and the rest of the provinces were to return U.S. booze to the shelves, sales would not be anywhere near what they were prior to this silliness. Because we Canadians are rightly annoyed, and we are choosing to buy Canadian products first, and products from anywhere but the USA when we can’t buy Canadian.
I might be biased, but I think we Canadians have been fantastic neighbours and friends to the United States of America, and they have traditionally been a reliable neighbour to Canada. I’m sure that from time to time Canada has played hardball during negotiations with the United States, I am sure that over the last 150 years we have annoyed them a time or two, but that is to be expected with any centuries old relationship. Times have changed, there is no doubt, but they will change again, and again in the years to come, and hopefully one day we will repair this fracture, and be good neighbours again, and we won’t be forced into arguments about whether the Stars and Stripes should be allowed to fly in a small town Canada public space again.
Trump’s term will end on January 20, 2029, which is roughly two and a half years from now. In many ways, Canada (and many other nations) is in a situation where one of the strategies is to simply wait for the end of the term for the current U.S. administration, and then try to repair the fractured relationship once the new administration is sworn in. But two and a half years can feel like a very long time when we are dealing with the likes of Trump.
As Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau said of the United States way back in 1969, and as I have quoted a time or two in the past, “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.” I recall a politician in Barrie in the early 1990s referring to that quote, saying that ‘If you sleep beside an elephant and he rolls over, you’re dead.”
This is one of those situations where I can grudgingly support the decision to temporarily remove the American flag from Market Square, but I certainly don’t like it. I don’t like that this is where we are in our relationship with the United States, but it is indeed where we currently are, with Meaford’s council making a decision that should never have had to be made.
