We must mend the U.S.-Canada relationship
by Stephen Moore · The Washington TimesOPINION:
The United States has always, thankfully, had a “special relationship” with Canada.
The Canadians are like our kid brother. Blood is thicker than water. Sure, we are rivals, and we have spats, but at the end of the day, we are still family.
For mutually beneficial strategic economic and national security reasons, North America must be united.
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Except now that special relationship is in danger, and President Trump — though correct in calling out Canada for cheating on trade deals (just ask our dairy farmers) — has unnecessarily wounded Canadian national pride with his talk of a 51st state and his use of the sword of higher tariffs against our most important ally.
Instead of de-escalating things, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney — driven by selfish political reasons and socialist impulses, and well aware that Mr. Trump is wildly unpopular in many Canadian provinces — has responded by rushing into the arms of the hate-America Europeans.
Mr. Carney wants to decouple from the U.S. economy and, in one fashion or another, join the European Union. This makes as much financial sense as buying stock in a typewriter company.
Europe is a falling stock and has been for 20 years. Why join the losing side? The average European citizen is now poorer than the average citizen of Mississippi, America’s poorest state.
Europe has so futilely tied itself to climate change extremism that the continent is shrinking its industrial production as it attempts to power industrial production with wind energy.
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In short, Europe is the model of how not to govern if a nation wants to get rich and pull its citizens out of poverty.
Making this move even more economically suicidal is that Canada’s No. 1 export is … oil and gas.
Alberta’s oil and gas fields are what keep the Canadian economy humming, though Quebec likes to pretend it does not need the fuel that keeps its lights on and its tax revenue flowing.
Yet by holding hands with the EU leaders, Mr. Carney is signing Canada’s economic death warrant.
Guess who hates oil and natural gas? The Europeans. They will insist that Canada ban or severely restrict production of the very fossil fuels on which the Canadian economy depends. If Canada cannot sell oil, what will be its major export?
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Sorry, but you cannot be a first-class world power selling hockey sticks.
Why in the world would the politicians in Ottawa want to align with their economic enemies?
The U.S. and Canada benefit mutually from our trade and security arrangements. I would like to see Mr. Trump act with a little more diplomacy and tamp down the anti-Canada rhetoric, such as renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America.” Canada was our greatest defender and advocate on the world stage after the Sept. 11 attacks.
North America must be united. President Reagan’s vision of the continent becoming a free-trade zone and the global superpower in agriculture, energy and technology makes even more sense now than it did 40 years ago.
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Yet Mr. Carney’s foolish dalliance with the Europeans could do severe injury to the pact that has helped make all of North America the freest and most prosperous continent on the planet.
He needs to stop. It is time to kiss and make up.
• Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the America First Policy Institute and a co-founder of Unleash Prosperity.
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