Mr. Twit went to Washington
The Premiers' bungling is screwing Canada
In line with Bond Papers’ Friday column, Radio-Canada exposed the amateurism and bungling of Canadian Premiers in Washington.
The best thing Andrew Furey could do in this current fight between Canada and the United States is just shut his yap.
Not just Andrew Furey.
All the Premiers who arrogantly and therefore stupidly think they can negotiate with the Americans.
Just STFU.
You are embarrassing yourself, embarrassing Canadians, and making things worse for the country by sticking your publicity-seeking pusses into situations you have no business getting into.
Furey could do well to remember the oath he took as a medical doctor: first, do no harm. His constant talk of an “existential threat” is nothing more than a Liberal Party talking point. It has more to do with Pierre Poilievre than Donald Trump. It frightens Canadians who do not know better and who look to their elected leaders for guidance. If Furey is unsteady - as he obviously is - then everyone else is frightened too. Furey’s constant nattering is especially harmful since he has no idea what to do in response to Trump and the Americans, as Furey repeatedly admits, has no power internationally to do anything that matters, and refuses to do anything in his own province that would improve the situation either.
Let us put this 51st state business to rest once and for all. Trump said it off-handedly. It was a joke. He’s said it for years and Trump keeps it up because it gets him coverage in Canada and frightens the Canadian Premiers. Trump is a bully and, as Melanie Joly reminded Europeans last week, he responds to strength. The Canadian Premiers are weak and venal. They are bunglers, out of their depth, and without the sense to realise it, which makes them stupid. No wonder Trump keeps taunting them as he did last week and they - stupidly - keep reacting. Even single-celled organisms have something over most Canadian Premiers. They learn.
For the rest of us, for those who don’t live in the swill of political talking points, media schedules, or anything in that desert of thought that is the Canadian conventional media, there is an insightful recent commentary online by the author of a book on American expansionism. You’ll learn more in five minutes reading that piece than you will in five nights of Cochrane.
For all Trump’s talk, the chances of the United States annexing Canada during his second term remain low. The Canadian public overwhelmingly opposes it (90 percent, according to a recent survey by the Angus Reid Institute) and the U.S. public does too. With no deal in sight, it is far more likely that Trump intends his expansionist rhetoric to unsettle the diplomatic status quo in service of other goals. As former senior adviser to Trudeau, Gerald Butts, remarked, “Trump used this ‘51st State’ line with Trudeau a lot during his first term. He’s doing it to rattle Canadian cages.”
Andrew Furey is not alone. He’s just the local example and across Canada one of the best examples of how staggeringly dangerous Canadian Premiers can be when they lack *any* of the qualities of leadership Canadians need, not just in this crisis but always. Furey says he is frustrated over Canada’s eroding relationship with the United States, the country’s biggest trading partner. Well, he should be ashamed of his own role in making it worse.
If Furey had any self-awareness - one of the most important qualities of a leader - he’d have stopped carrying on as he has been doing. But this is Canada and he is a Premier and for some reason, that is enough for the clowns to pile into the clown car and keep going, regardless. Doug Ford, this year’s Chief Clown is going back to Washington, again, in a few weeks time. His meeting with the White House dude in charge of hiring temps apparently wasn’t enough of a clue that Ford and the other Premiers are being taken, being played by the Americans, that they are looked upon in Washington as buffoons, and rightly so to be brutally frank since they keep repeating the same mistakes over and over. If the Toronto Star is right, Ford and his handlers think these junkets help him win re-election, which means they are putting their misguided judgments and self-interest above the country. Their interest is provincial in the worst sense of the word. The other Premiers are no better.
Don’t be like Canadian Premiers. Have a clue. Become a Bond Papers subscriber.
On his return from Washington, Furey told news media that, as VOCM reported, “negotiating with the United States has proven to be a very frustrating exercise since the new administration under Donald Trump came in.” Let’s make this clear for everyone, including young Andrew. They - Furey and his fellow Premiers - weren’t negotiating with anyone. Nor was their trip “diplomacy.” It was a junket. It was a wasteful, embarrassing, counterproductive self-indulgence by a group of clueless, self-absorbed politicians paid for by the trusting people of their respective provinces in more ways than one.
No Canadian Premier has the legal power let alone the political or other power to negotiate an international treaty or settle an international dispute. The Premiers had no position, no end goal, and absolutely no perspective on Canada’s international position and the national strategy. In fact, in this latest junket, they deliberately refused any briefings on Canadian defence and security interests and its international trade position, bypassed the federal government entirely, the Canadian ambassador in Washington, the highly skilled and well-connected Canadian embassy staff and anyone who could actually have helped them mostly by getting them to stay the hell home out of it.
Their only line - that the tariffs will hurt Canadians and Americans - is the same one they had at the start. But it is also something the people responsible for the tariffs know. They need to hear something new and the Canadian Premiers cannot say anything that would change the Americans’ minds. The Premiers have nothing.
To ensure they were utterly unprepared for their meetings, the 13 posers relied on a third-rate lobbying firm with the unprofessional, risible, and insubstantial name of CheckMate Government Relations. The firm focuses exclusively on North Carolina state politics (!!!) and had no and has no apparent pull inside the beltway beyond North Carolina’s interests and certainly nothing in the White House. Last Monday’s meeting is proof of that. The firm’s only connection to the Trumps is that the managing partner of the firm - Ches MacDowell - can be generously described as a “hunting buddy” of Don Junior. None of the other lobbyists in the firm have any substantive connection in Washington. And any idea that Ches’ family experience with fentanyl drove American policy is too idiotic for words.
The Premiers found this useless lot through young Trump, who the Yukon government leader met at a reception. Young Don was only too happy to hook up his hunting buddy with a few rubes so he could make a quick buck. The story of how they got to that point is even more embarrassingly incompetent. The Premiers met at a Mississaugua Hilton - the Canadian equivalent of a Holiday Inn in Paramus, New Jersey - with three unnamed former Canadian ambassadors to Washington last November just after Chrystia Freeland resigned from the federal cabinet. The Premiers felt they needed to do something, evidently out of a sense of their own self-importance and panic, when their Yukon buddy mentioned he’d met young Trump once. A couple of phone calls and a meeting later and the Premiers had what they call a “strategy.” You cannot make this stuff up.
Back home for a few minutes before his next swan to the mainland, Furey told reporters “the water on the beans is continually changing.” Utter nonsense. All Furey does in this comment is tell everyone how fundamentally unaware he and his colleagues are. But, Furey now “think[s] we need to, as Premiers, go home and re-evaluate our strategy, but be firm and courageous in our resolve that Canadian sovereignty and independence cannot be jeopardized, cannot be eroded in any way shape or form.” Do not be fooled.
This and Furey’s insistance we must now not give an inch are just rooted in the same naivety and panic that drove his first response, which was appeasement. What has been missing from Furey and the other Premiers even in the face of their Washington fiasco is anything vaguely resembling actual insight or, as it turns out from this Washington fiasco m, Team Canada, despite the number of times they’ve encouraged everyone to stick together. If he supported Team Canada, Andrew Furey would let the federal government do the talking. He talks because he does not believe in the idea of Team Canada.
If Furey is serious about finding a new strategy then let him start by clearing up the considerable mess of his four years as Premier. Financially and economically the province is demonstrably worse off. He can also support interprovincial free trade. Right now, all Furey has said is that lowering trade barriers is not as easy as it looks. That is so far from true, what Furey is really saying is that he does not support interprovincial free trade. He and his administration have already pledged to protect local sectors of the economy from free trade, including American beer brands and agriculture and government purchasing.
Furey’s hypocrisy - back Team Canada, while he personally doesn’t or arguing against international trade barriers while supporting interprovincial ones - would be hysterically funny if the real costs of his foolishness - thousands of jobs and billions of new economic activity and revenue for the government - were not so serious. These lost opportunities are as larger or larger than the billions and more Furey foolishly gave to Francois Legault for nothing.
If Andrew Furey sincerely believes the Premiers need to change their strategy, he should take two vows, one of policy chastity and the other of silence.
We’d all be better off for it.
