Countdown to the New World Disorder

The headline on my National Post column: Canada grows ever closer to failed-state status. Subhead: Waiting for something resembling a Team Canada approach to materialize in response to Trump's threats. The original title for this edition of the Real Story newsletter was 'We're F*cking Doomed, but I’ve almost changed my mind.

Almost, because the War Cabinet meeting in Ottawa - by which I mean Canada’s premiers meeting as the Council of the Federation with Canada’s dead-man-walking prime minister - could have been a lot worse. As things turned out, it was mostly just air. But it will have to do.

From a strictly Canadian perspective, here’s what we’re up against.

With Parliament padlocked, we’re still in the death grip the worst government in Canadian history on the eve of the worst rupture in Canada-U.S. relations since I don’t know when, involving the possible immolation of hundreds of thousands of Canadian jobs from Donald Trump’ threatened 25-percent tariffs on Canadian exports to the United States. And this is occurring during the worst crisis within the NATO alliance since its founding in 1949, during the bloodiest war in Europe since the days of the Third Reich.

It shouldn’t be taking our politicians every ounce of energy they can muster just to prove that they’re not every bit as parochial and as spineless as the ugliest and dumbest Americans imagine Canadians to be. But here we are.

Oilpatch matriarch Danielle Smith with the Caliph of Palm Beach and professional blowhard Kevin O’Leary.

I’ve been inattentive around this place in recent days because there’s simply too much going on in the files I cover. The prospects for a forced surrender in Ukraine, for instance. The on-again, off-again ceasefire in Gaza, which is on again, and a huge development in an investigation I’ve been undertaking off the side of my desk for some time now.

Remember this newsletter and National Post piece from last April? The ghost fleet of oil tankers in “International Sponsors of War,” about how the threads run from Tehran to Shandong and from Moscow to Gaza and the Alberta oilpatch and back again?

Well well: At least 65 oil tankers have dropped anchor at multiple locations, including off the coasts of China and Russia, since the United States announced a new sanctions package on Jan. 10, ship tracking data showed on Monday.

I see the CBC is on the case. From Friday: 'Shadow fleet' exploits loophole to trade Russian oil, possibly fuelling Canadian vehicles.

It’s not all about oil

Mexico is one thing, but Trump’s maniacal pronouncements about Canada have nothing to do with border security, illegal migrants or fentanyl. Our predicament is solely because the reality-television American president-elect is a coward and a bully who’d rather avoid a fight with Moscow or Beijing by browbeating, badgering and bludgeoning Greenland, Panama and Canada instead.

Trump’s proposition that Canadians should submit to being annexed as the 51st American state is being loudmouthed approvingly by Kevin O’Leary, another insufferably greasy reality-television fixture, by way of a common-currency, single-passport North American zollverein. It’s always and only about the money with that guy.

The plan is that Canada should transform itself into a sort of American Belarus. Some people may even find that the idea compares favorably with the impoverishment and cultural humiliation Canada has suffered after having been reduced to a bloated postnational Instagram account after a decade of the catastrophically frivolous Justin Trudeau.

It’s certainly what has encouraged Alberta premier Danielle Smith to accomodate Trump’s belligerence by swanning around his Mar-a-Lago palace with O’Leary at her side in the hope of having Alberta’s oilpatch exempted from the countrywide pain a Canada-U.S trade war would inevitably inflict.

Smith appears to have failed to cut a deal for herself, but you never know. “We don’t need their fuel, we don’t need their energy, we don’t need their oil and gas. We don’t need anything that they have,” Trump has declared. But he just might give Alberta the special treatment Smith wants, just to set us off against one another like a pack of squabbling schoolchildren.

We’ll see. He’s attempting to pit Greenlanders against Denmark, which holds sovereignty over the giant ice-locked island, and he’s succeeded in alienating just about everyone in Copenhagen, all for absolutely no economic, military or security advantage to Americans. See Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic: Trump Triggers a Crisis in Denmark—And Europe.

And we may not be up against a 25 percent tariff. It may be 25 percent but phased in, or it might be a final figure shy of 25 percent. Nobody knows exactly what will be contained in the roughly 100 “shock and awe” executive orders Trump says he intends to sign on Monday. It’s a weird move that evades the ordinary scrutiny of Congress.

Attending by video call from her holiday home in Panama, Smith alone refused to sign Wednesday’s anodyne and uninspiring First Ministers’ Statement on the Canada-United States Relationship. She’d already threatened a “national unity” crisis if the Council of the Federation’s nine premiers and three territorial leaders decided against carving out a special Albertan exemption from any hypothetical action Canada might take to retaliate against Trump’s trade-war attacks.

Smith’s complaint on Wednesday was either because of or in spite of this timid paragraph:

While they are making every effort to prevent U.S tariffs, First Ministers are committed to continuing to work together on a full range of measures to ensure a robust response to possible U.S. tariffs, including supports for sectors, businesses, and individuals. If the federal government implements retaliatory measures, it will ensure the rapid availability of substantial resources that effectively mitigate economic impacts to workers and businesses. This includes, but is not limited to, the distribution of revenues from potential retaliatory tariffs as quickly as possible. They agreed to take a collaborative approach to U.S. engagement that recognizes the unique economic needs of all provinces and territories.

So yes, you could say export tariffs are still “on the table” as a possible measure to make Americans feel some greater pain from the sting of their own stupid tariffs. It is still quite possible that Ottawa, which has sole consitutional jurisdiction in the matter, might impose restrictions or export tariffs on Canadian oil bound for American buyers.

And such measures might well be a stupid idea. But that’s it. It’s something that might happen, theoretically. That’s it, and it’s left Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre dodging the most important question: What about it? Are export tariffs that include Alberta oil on or off the table of hypotheticals with you? Are you with Smith or everybody else?

Poilievre won’t say. He’ll say a lot of things when asked, much of it warmed-over 1980s-style grievances that are commonplace in Alberta, but he won’t actually answer the question. It’s already bad enough that Poilievre’s big-ticket opposition to the Liberals’ carbon tax has plummeted in value to near-zero now that the Liberal leadership hopefuls Marc Carney, Chrystia Freeland and even poor old Chandra Arya are also suddenly against it.

So spare a thought for Poilievre, who needs to cobble together an entirely new campaign strategy, but for now, the job of articulating a principled, patriotic and common-sense conservative response to Trump’s imbecilities has fallen to former prime minister Stephen Harper.

In the meantime, Premier Smith may find consolation in the company of Billy Ray Cyrus, Carrie Underwood, Kid Rock and the Village People at Trump’s inauguration in Washington on Monday.

All for the moment.