TORONTO – A softer term for deception may be purposeful distraction or diversion. Most people, me included, have difficulty following the bouncing ball. Imagine what it is like when the juggler has more than one ball in the air. 

What is not difficult to understand is that Donald Trump, who will be sworn in as President in 47 days. Moreover, until the economic behemoths and their political-military groupings displace the supremacy of the USA on the world stage, his presidency will set the agenda for the rest of the world – for better or for worse.

Adjusting to, and taking measures to derive advantage from, what the soon-to-be-president is preparing to do with bi-lateral or multi- lateral relationships would seem to require some strategic plans that consider where accommodations may be made with the least amount of disruption.

No one will reveal the details of such a plan – if one exists – on Canada’s part. We are typically in “reaction” mode. Some students of history, a’ la Homer Simpson animated cartoon series, refer to this stratagem, derisively, as the surrender monkey syndrome.

Why? Because Donald Trump threatened to impose a 25% tariff on all Canadian goods [and perhaps] services from us … unless we clean up our Immigration policies, export of toxic pharmaceuticals, cease operating as a vassal state to China India, firm up our obligations to secure borders and to ‘protect democracy’ militarily around the globe. That is the deal he put on the table.

It is not a novel set of issues the northern half of North America (Canada) has had to deal with as a condition of autonomous/sovereign existence, independent of the voracious neighbour to the south. We have a ‘wolf and lamb’ relationship, but we possess what the world may need: natural resources aplenty, innovative populations and, potentially, a clientele to help us develop them in a mutually beneficial manner. It is a pretty no-nonsense ‘vision’ statement.

Nor has it always been smooth sailing, so to speak. Founded on the concept of “preferential tariffs” with ‘mother Britain’, an infrastructure favouring east-west trade and an immigration plan to populate and exploit the vast agricultural potential of Canada’s West, we slowly, progressively eroded our position in all sectors.

I would be a long list of examples, were we to enumerate them all. At the risk of turning this into a facile simplistic discussion, we need only look at what motivated the Softwood Lumber Agreement(s), the Free Trade Agreement, the Abandonment of the Crow’s Nest Pass Agreement, the North America Free Trade Agreement and so on. It is no longer the same Canada of the early post-World War II era.

Our politics are all about “crises” [fill in the type], the latest fashion is “foreign interference”. Party leaders are judged by the standard set for security clearance processes. Or to paraphrase a former head of CSIS who appeared before a Parliamentary committee on the matter, on November 28: we can only disclose relatively little, and, the recipient of the information cannot act on it. Another witness on the same panel bemoaned the fact that the government of Canada has been aware for decades of the extra judicial killings by the Indian government, as [allegedly] in the case of the Khalistani activist Nijjar on Canadian soil.

He neglected to mention the most notable, deadliest, act of terror – the Air India bombing – perpetrated by activists from Canada: death toll, 329.

I cannot make out the detail for all the smoke and mirrors but I have a strong sense that Donald Trump really enjoyed that rack of lamb at Mar-O-Lago.

In the pic above, from Twitter – X, the meeting at Mar-O-Lago