Here we are getting ready to celebrate our 150th birthday. That’s old for a person, but young for a country. As we get ready to party, we discover our mother, the U.K., and always-supportive uncle, the U.S., have become dysfunctional.
First, Britain votes to exit the European Union with its Brexit vote, then the U.S. makes Donald J. Trump president. To top that off, Britain’s prime minister Theresa May calls an election she had no reason to call. She had a solid majority and years to go in her mandate. She was ahead in the polls and called an election anyway and watched her lead dissipate and her majority shrink to minority status.
In the U.S., a man who had no electoral experience and no military experience has become the leader of the world’s biggest military complex and most powerful democracy.
Donald Trump is a man Vanity Fair describes as a serial bankrupt who failed in the casino business, where people go to lose their money.
He’s a man author Graydon Carter describes as someone for whom truth is an inconvenient concept.
The U.S. president can’t seem to control himself on Twitter, but has the nuclear codes at hand.
So with all this in mind it was interesting to see Chrystia Freeland, our foreign minister, acknowledging the importance of the U.S. in the past but clearly responding to the Trump presidency by saying Canadian diplomacy and development sometimes requires the backing of hard power.
She went on to say, “No longer can Canada depend on the U.S. to provide a collective umbrella, while Ottawa skimps on the defence budget.”
Now the proof, as they say, will be in the pudding. While Canada’s defence minister Harjit Sajjan followed Ms. Freeland’s speech with promises of substantial spending on the military (promises of more soldiers, ships and planes), those commitments don’t come until after an election in 2019. They will also probably mean even deeper deficit budgets.
Still, as we prepare for our birthday party, we look at both the U.K. and U.S. as nations going through instability we’ve never even imagined, while Canada is looking more stable and more secure.
Our prime minister seems to be growing in the job, and remains popular, while the Conservative opposition has elected Andrew Scheer, a young man who appears to be mature, likable and grounded. The NDP has yet to elect a new leader, but there’s likely to be a stable three-party Parliament that shows no sign of becoming unstable any time soon.
Having a stable national government is a blessing when we look at the nations we have traditionally grown from and with, but we need leadership and vision to continue to grow and prosper. Happy birthday, Canada!
