Canada is in a MAGA world of trouble.
The nation’s “dearest” and “closest” friend has declared a debilitating trade war by imposing stiff tariffs on most goods being imported into the home of unfettered capitalism – the United States of America.
The impulsive man-child who treats America’s signature and most lucrative bilateral relationship like a yo-yo, is, of course, mercurial, Make-America-Great-Again, baseball-cap-wearing US President Donald Trump.
Threats and uncertainty are the defining features of Trump’s belligerent foreign policy which fatally undercuts the jejune suggestion that he, unlike his trigger-happy predecessors, is the “peace now” candidate.
Compounding the palpable anxiety hovering over Canada like a heavy shroud is the fact that, at this crucial moment, the world’s second-largest country is being led by what amounts to a caretaker government with a lame-duck prime minister at the soon-to-be-expired helm.
That is not the ideal place for a usually sedate nation of more than 40 million to be in while it wrestles with a strutting, china-shattering bully acting out south of the 49th parallel.
But true to self-absorbed history and haughty form, the governing Liberal Party is consumed by a leadership race that will pick a successor to the ditched-in-the-scrap-yard-like-a-spent-used-car – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
As the harried contest to replace Trudeau by March 9 takes quick shape, it seems to me, at least, that the Liberals are looking for a political saviour in all the wrong places.
As a general writing rule, I try to avoid making sweeping generalisations about a big place made up of lots of different people.
Still, I think it is fair to say that there is a brewing disquiet among many Canadians about the present and future triggered by, among other pressing concerns, the egregious cost of housing and food, as well as a pervasive sense that the compact between citizens and their government has evaporated.
It is, I suppose, a familiar story that politicians along the narrow political spectrum in Canada have leveraged – generation after generation – in order to win elections with the often-disingenuous promise to make life better for “ordinary Canadians”.
If the results of recent polls are accurate, the yapping, stunt-addicted Conservative Party leader, Pierre Poilievre, is on the cusp of becoming prime minister after spending almost 10 years in purgatory – the opposition benches.
Meanwhile, the flip head of the left-wing New Democratic Party, Jagmeet Singh, has failed to resonate with Canadians yearning for tangible solutions to urgent problems.
As a result, the flailing socialists remain stuck, unable to escape the glib, self-satisfying delusion that they represent the “conscience” of Parliament.
Desperate-to-cling-to-position-and-prestige Liberals have turned their doleful eyes to two leading candidates – who, in spirit and purpose, are a facsimile of one another – to try to prevent what is destined to be a drubbing in the next federal election that could take place as early as March.
Cocky Liberals have always believed that they have the almost divine right to lead Canada and that power is an entitlement rather than a privilege earned.
As such, the pursuit of power, not the common good, has been the Liberal Party’s raison d’etre.
Predictably, the two candidates for the leadership position, Chrystia Freeland and Mark Carney, are establishment-hugging reactionaries who are committed to defending the status quo rather than seriously challenging it.
It is plain to anyone outside myopic partisans that neither Freeland nor Carney is a “retail” politician who enjoys that elusive touch which combines seriousness with accessibility.
Frankly, Freeland and Carney are as charismatic as a pair of mannequins.
Their stilted, bromide-filled performances on the abbreviated campaign trail, and, in Carney’s curious case, in an inane “conversation” with comedian Jon Stewart are embarrassing proof of that.
And both, by training and temperament, are technocrats who have decidedly more in common with the comfortable chattering classes they are now busy distancing themselves from, in convenient pursuit of run-of-the-mill voters.
The coming federal election will, like every election before it, tilt on two words: Change and hope.
As I have explained in an earlier column, governments have natural life expectancies. Then, the appetite for a “new, fresh beginning” becomes inevitable despite the futile attempts to resist this wave-like impulse.
That is the hard-to-overcome dilemma that Freeland and Carney confront.
They will traffic in the fanciful idea that they are “change agents” who can offer, in words and deeds, discouraged Canadians renewed hope.
Given her long, entrenched links to a tired, performative Liberal government that Canadians have, on the whole, soured on, Freeland, in particular, faces a herculean climb to buck history and distance herself from the loser and liability she once served with such fawning deference in a variety of senior cabinet posts, including as finance and foreign affairs minister.
Having triggered his forced departure, Trudeau made a calculated point during his news conference announcing his resignation in early January to remind Canadians that Freeland was, in effect, a Robin to his Batman.
“Chrystia has been by my side for close to 10 years now,” Trudeau said. “She has been an incredible political partner through just about everything we have done as a government and a party over the past decade.”
Ouch.
For his self-serving part, Carney, the ex-Governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England, has reportedly surrounded himself with the same handlers who shepherded Trudeau Jr into the prime minister’s office.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
If he prevails, Carney will not only be crowned leader of the Liberal Party but prime minister, as well.
Canada’s 24th prime minister will then have to deal with a prickly quandary that is sure to undermine his legitimacy: Carney does not hold a seat in Parliament.
Poilievre – who has done nothing else other than hold a seat in Parliament – will pounce and shout, justifiably, that Carney lacks the authority bestowed by Canadians via the ballot box to govern even for a short time.
All the while, Trump looms and crows that he will compel Canada by economic force to capitulate not only to his immediate demands but, ultimately, to become America’s 51st state.
Amid this costly brawl, Liberals appear determined, yet again, to choose gentility over brawn.
They ought to be searching, instead, for a brass-knuckled protégé of the gritty, street-smart former prime minister, Jean Chrétien, who, in the run-up to the calamitous Iraq war, wisely rebuffed joining the invading US-led “coalition” of the short-sighted.
He or she might just do the happy trick.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
