TORONTO – It is finally here: election day, the day on which a country – the nation state with the greatest potential for good or otherwise, in the world – chooses its Chief Executive Officer. With all due deference to my own country of birth or to the one in which I have raised a family (Italy and Canada), we are talking about the USA. 

My father, a WW II veteran, hooked me on following American politics – in fact obliged me – ever since his favourite President, John F. Kennedy (the first Catholic to win that office) sought and won election in 1960. Until Dad’s passing in 1989, a portrait of JFK hung on his living room wall. Mom respected his wishes until her own passing, nineteen years later, after which my sister removed it upon selling the house.

While I have never understood the fascination for ‘things American’, I do acknowledge people may have a “leaning” that predisposes them to thinking that their political preference here in Canada “may” affect their choices in Canada.

The English have a saying for this: “Balderdash!” Maybe the Jewish Diaspora in Canada, if stretched, might be influenced by Canada’s disposition towards Israel, but it is not likely to punish or reward Canada because of America’s treatment of Israeli.

Canadians and political parties who await the outcome of the election in the USA before they take a position here on any Party are clouding issues for pollsters, which are, by the way, only to happy to speculate on the who or why Canadians would prefer as the President in the USA. Their “data-based analysis” will have as much to do with the outcome as my venerable father’s views about presidents in the 1960s had on his need to go to work daily in Toronto to support his dependents.

For the typical voter anywhere “kitchen table” policies and priorities nearly always rise to the top of any list determining choice. Everything else falls into the category of esoteric flights of the fanciful. Just as an example, the annual Defense Budget for the USA is equal to, or exceeds, Canada’s entire annual revenue and expenditure plan! 

However, the focus of attention for our mainstream media has been on the language of personal insults, gender/pronoun preferences, reproductive rights [in an environment] of collapsing demographic sustainability. We plead mea culpa as well.

Maybe by the time our readers go through this Americans will have chosen definitively who their “new” CEO/President will be. It will not have an impact on the competence of Danielle Smith, the Premier of Alberta whose 91.5% approval rating in a review of her leadership will surely invigorate the plan of her government to extract concessions from our Federal Government.

The CEO/Prime Minister of that government, in what has become true American-style politics, was subjected to the most unflattering observation and analysis of his competency, in respect of Canada-India relations and domestic security. The author was none other than a former NDP Premier of British Columbia and later Federal Liberal Cabinet Minister, the Hon. Ujjal Dosanjh (see National Post: https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/ujjal-dosanjh-justin-trudeau-sikh-extremism). Canadians have an expression for that: “OUCH!’’.