Trump Aside, Canada and the U.S. Need to Cooperate

“Living next to you, is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”
— Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, 1969.

I have good news for Canadians, including my wife’s family — the grunting has a sell by date. Donald Trump is already on the way out. Even as he postures and shapes the world, sometimes for the better, often for the worse, Trump is rapidly becoming a “lame duck,” even losing his grip on his once loyal vassals in Congress, as well as the constitutional conservatives on the Supreme Court.

There have also been reports that suggest his health may be declining. Trump is 79, reportedly takes more aspirin than his doctors recommend, gets little sleep, sometimes has trouble keeping his eyes open at times during televised White House events, and his ankles swell. His diet of fries, Big Macs and sodas probably doesn’t help.

Yet losing Trump, before or after he slinks into the sunset, will not alter the fundamental realities shaping America’s future and that of Canada. The United States remains North America’s dominant power, standing as the world’s leading fossil fuel producer and military force, as seen recently in both Iran and Venezuela. Married to the country’s technological power — challenged seriously only by China — the U.S. will continue casting a shadow over its far less populous neighbor.

Trump has already changed Canada, even making it more Trumpian. Carney, the former apostle of the climate industrial complex, has rediscovered the importance of Canada’s natural resources, most of all oil and gas. And he is doing much of what Trump did to close the border, albeit with less savagery, as Canada too becomes more restrictive on immigration.

This is happening because our societies converge even as our political leaders squabble. Canada’s population, like that of the U.S., is starting to shrink due to low birthrates among the native-born and less mass immigration. The pervasive power of the supremely global oligarchic tech platforms remains unchallenged, informing — and often poisoning — the already desiccated body politic. And as in America, notes scholar George Dunn, Canada’s unique regions have been bowdlerized by mass communication and culture. Basically, we share the same dilemmas.

Read the rest of this story at National Post

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: U.S. and Canada flags together at Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.