Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Part I

---

Canada’s Liberal Party Comes From Behind and Wins Yet Another Election: And the Election Was Largely About President Trump

Well, Canadians went to the polls on Monday, and it turns out, it appears, that the liberal party has won a fourth straight victory. It does not have an absolute majority in the Parliament, but it is likely that it will be called upon to form a government, and at this point, under Prime Minister Mark Carney, who is the leader of the liberal party. And Carney came to that position just months ago because of the resignation of Justin Trudeau, who had been the liberal Prime Minister. Trudeau became very unpopular in himself, and his party became very unpopular, and it was expected that the conservative party would march to an almost certain victory under the leadership of Pierre Poilievre, who was the leader of the Conservative Party. He actually, as it turned out, not only did not win the election for his party, he lost his own parliamentary seat.

This turns out to be astounding news from Canada, but at the end of the day not all that surprising the way it all fell out. As I say, if you rewind history, the conservatives appeared to be destined for an inevitable victory, and the liberal party was incredibly unpopular, especially with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and many of his policies weren’t working, Canadians weren’t satisfied, the nation faces a housing crisis, so many other issues, and they wanted change, and the change at that point appeared to point to a conservative party victory. But instead, what happened on Monday was a liberal party victory, and under a new prime minister, Mark Carney, who of all things is a former central banker, that’s going to be a big part of the story. He was the governor of the Bank of Canada, later the governor of the Bank of England. That’s an unlikely platform all of a sudden to become an elected leader of a national party, and at this point, to lead a national government.

That’s a part of the story, however, but the other part of the story isn’t really about a Canadian, it’s about an American, and this means the President of the United States. And if anyone is single-handedly responsible for the liberal victory in Canada, it is the Republican President of the United States, Donald Trump, because of his threats to Canada, in particular, his statements about Canada becoming the 51st state, his statement about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, oh, it was just an accident calling him the governor of Canada as if he were the governor of a state. Canadians turned out to see this election as a referendum on Canada, and a referendum on whether or not Canada would buckle to the pressure of the American president.

Now clearly there has to be a lot to this story, and at this point we need to untangle some historical factors. So here in this part of North America, the vast landmass which includes both the United States and Canada, you are looking at two of the biggest nations, just in terms of territory, that you find in the world today. Over the course of the last 100 years, the United States of America has turned out to be the world superpower, and Canada, our northern neighbor, has been a partner in America’s rise.

But from the beginning it has been a somewhat awkward relationship. Awkward, but friendly. The most awkward reality when you look at the United States and Canada is that the United States, well, fought a revolution against Britain, and Canada at that point in the main meant Britain. And so Canada remained loyal to the crown, the colonies to the south rebelled against the crown. America won independence, in Canada there was a continued relationship under the monarchy, under the British crown. Over a period of time that would be negotiated and renegotiated, but Canada is still now effectively related to Great Britain, and the head of state in Canada now is the King of England. And so let’s just say that distinction alone is a big part of the story, and the cultural realities in a worldview analysis also flow somewhat from that.

In cultural terms, Canada is in some ways more closely allied with Europe, and especially with England and with Western European nations, than with the United States, which is its immediate neighbor to the south. On the other hand, we are sharing an incredibly long border, we do share an awful lot of common economic interests, and obviously we have strategic and military interests in common as well. Years ago I was able to hear former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney speak of the challenge for Canadian government, and he said, “It’s no challenge at all once you factor in that about 90% of your population lives within 100 miles of another nation’s border.”

Americans should look to Canada recognizing it is a perplexing position when you look at the situation of our northern neighbor. America should be very, very thankful that we have Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. When you look at other parts of the world, just say, look at Europe and consider the situation of a nation such as France, or a nation such as Germany, not to mention smaller nations, they are largely surrounded by those who at times they have seen as enemies, and they have been at war, and those contested borders, well, just look at some of those names, the big names of states and countries as you’re thinking about Europe and notice how much has changed just given the various wars, in particular the two world wars, not to mention the later expansionism of the Soviet Union. In other words, you look at North America and this looks like an incredibly peaceful place. In world history, largely unprecedented as a peaceful place.

But when it comes to cultural realities and to politics, Canada is just, well, not just the same, it’s also different. And so one of the differences is that I mentioned Canada has tracked in some ways more in keeping with Europe than with the United States. That means on a lot of cultural issues and social issues, Canada is actually far more liberal than the United States. Just to give one example, you look at assisted suicide, or what’s called assisted death, euthanasia, this is now a matter of law according to the charter of freedoms of Canada and court interpretations, and you’re looking at the fact that the same is not true to the south in the United States where there’s a very different understanding, although some of our more liberal states have moved in that direction. But Canada’s moral transformation, just on the issue of euthanasia, has been absolutely massive and incredibly fast. It is following more of the European model than the US model.

Canada also has a parliamentary system of government, and that means that voters officially vote for a member of parliament. And the question is, who will gain more seats, which party will gain more seats? If the party is able, either on its own in an outright electoral victory, or in cooperation with another party if it needs to form a coalition government, the party that wins the election generally gets to form the government, and that means the head of that party will become the prime minister. In this case I mentioned it is Mark Carney, and what makes Mark Carney so interesting is that he’s never run in an election before. And so this is his first election, and he won it. He won it astoundingly, and not so much because of himself, but because of President Trump, it turns out.

But when you look at Mark Carney himself, again, former governor of the Bank of Canada, governor of the Bank of England, the only person to hold the tenure of serving as the head of two of the national banks in that sense. And so you’re talking about someone who is big in terms of international banking, and in particular central banking. And so this is analogous roughly to the role of the Fed, the Federal Reserve system, in the United States. But as I mentioned, Canada has a closer relationship with Europe in terms of culture, but particularly with Britain, and so if there was going to be someone to hold those two positions, it would likely be someone who could hold the position as the governor of the Bank of Canada and then the governor of the Bank of England. He is a financial technocrat, that’s the point, he is a central banker.

The general profile of a central banker is not that of a politician, which is why many people were surprised when Mark Carney became the prime minister after the resignation of Justin Trudeau, and at the time there were not many who were predicting he would lead the party to victory, but he did. He did. And at this point we’re not sure if it was an outright victory, it doesn’t look like it, it looks like there’s going to have to be some kind of coalition, but he’s almost assuredly going to be the Prime Minister going forward. And again, it wasn’t Canadian voters alone who made that decision, it was Canadian voters who made that decision in light of comments, even threats, made by the President of the United States.

And so as you look at the period before President Trump started making those comments, everyone was assured the conservatives were going to win an outright victory. Instead, not only did they not win a victory, they did gain more seats than it had in the past, but they lost to the liberal party, and not only that, but Poilievre, who is the leader of the conservative party, lost his own seat in parliament. That, by the way, is something that is rarely survived by someone who is a party leader.

It reminds me of the situation of Winston Churchill, he wasn’t yet prime minister, but back in 1922 he lost re-election to parliament, he also suffered from appendicitis, it had been a bad year, he said that he ended the year without an office, without a seat, without a party, and without an appendix. Another way of saying, it was a very bad year.

The role of President Trump in this election became very clear, President Trump repeatedly spoke of Canada becoming a part of the United States, he spoke of Canada as a potential 51st state, he said so condescendingly, and addressed himself directly to the then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, he, again, referred to him as governor, that was not an accident. And even in the lead up to the election, President Trump was still saying, well, very bellicose things about our relationship with Canada.

And here’s something interesting, Canada has in general been known as a rather, let’s just say, stable nation, a nation that sees itself as a rational actor on the world scene, a nation that sees itself as one of the, say, 10 to 15 leading nations of the world with strategic importance, and by the way, it has undeniable strategic importance. It has been a source of political stability and a force for political stability, not only at home, but around the world. Canada has looked to the United States as an awkward neighbor for a very, very long time. It was awkward, of course, when the colonies won independence, it was awkward at other points.

And Canada is a nation unto itself, it has a different history, it has a different political tradition. It has complications that the United States does not have. It has Quebec, which is a province that was actually a result of the French expansion into the new world, and it is still a province that claims a good deal of independence in terms of its own rules and its own laws, and even the French language. The entire nation, by the way, is officially bilingual, but the situation in Quebec is that French is the predominant language.

Part II

---

It Doesn’t Fit: Conservatives in the Unites States Don’t Want Canada as 51st State – And Canadians Overwhelmingly Agree

Now, President Trump has made bellicose statements not only about Canada, but about the Panama Canal, and about Greenland. Strategically, the comments about Greenland make a little more sense than the comments about Canada. For one thing, conservatives in the United States should not want Canada to become a 51st state, and that is for fiscal reasons. It is also for cultural and moral reasons. Canada is far more liberal than the United States just taken as a composite whole, and if it did become the 51st state, and by the way, just try to figure that out, it boggles the imagination to figure out how it could be just a single state. In any event, almost all of Canada would be more liberal, or would at least trend more liberal in terms of many issues, than the most conservative portions of the United States.

And so you look at that and you recognize, if Donald Trump did indeed somehow bring about the fact that Canada became the 51st state and all that would come just in terms of the realignment in Congress and the House and the Senate, and you go on, it is unlikely that it would be to the advantage of the Republican party, and that, I assure you, is an understatement.

I think what President Trump really intends behind all of this is to correct what he sees as an imbalance in the balance of trade between the United States and Canada, and also to make very clear that the United States considers having the territory and the political and military context of Canada in a way that is very friendly to the United States. And even as we see a rivalry on the world scene in a global context between China and Russia and the United States, and that could leave the United States as the one singularity in that sense, it is clear that even the territorial advantage of Canada all the way up to the Arctic circle becomes very, very important. That explains why Greenland is also a part of that picture.

And I do not think it’s likely, at the end of the day, that Greenland is going to become a part of the United States, I don’t believe that Canada is going to become a part of the United States, I don’t think that is properly what the United States should want, but we should want to be able to make certain that all of that territory is fully under the control of, and for the use of, a common military defense against both China and Russia.

I think it would surprise many Christians in the United States to know that if you were to go back, say to the beginnings of the 20th century, church attendance rates in Canada were higher than church attendance rates in the United States, Canada was a churched nation. It was also much smaller in terms of its population then, than now. Canada’s population now is about 40 million, and like the United States, it is a transcontinental nation, and like the United States, there are regional differences in the Canadian map that also represent differences in Canadian culture.

But Canada, following the example of Europe, has become far more secularized than its southern neighbor in the United States. The US has its own challenges when it comes to secularization, but church attendance in the United States is markedly higher than church attendance in Canada, and the cultural influence of Christianity, and in particular historic biblical evangelical Protestant Christianity in Canada, it has been on the decline for quite a long time, and by the way, that goes hand in hand with the social liberalism seen in such things as abortion and euthanasia, or “assisted dying.”

But the bottom line in all of this is that one of the most unexpected developments in recent political history is that statements repeatedly, energetically made by a president of the United States has reshaped the Canadian political landscape. Something else to learn from this is that patriotism can be reawakened by unexpected sources, Canadian patriotism, it is not just like, say, the patriotism of other nations, it is often described by Canadians themselves as somewhat understated, but they’ve insisted nonetheless love of country is there, and guess what? The agent for bringing about the affirmation of love of country when it came to Canadians and political defiance toward the United States, it came after statements made by the President of the United States. It’s going to be very interesting to see what happens.

By the way, also in political terms, it is clear that President Trump rather intentionally made the statements he made even knowing that it would likely return the liberal party to power, and that just raises the question of what is the long-term strategy beyond the United States of the survival of conservative ideas and conservative political structures such as parties?

In closing, I want to cite the closing words of Conrad Black, Lord Black’s history of Canada, it’s entitled Rise To Greatness: The History of Canada from the Vikings to the Present. That’s a long history. He concludes his history with these words, “It is the chief contention of this book that for more than 400 years there’s been a continuous thread of genius and determination to create and build and improve an original and distinguished political society in the northern half of this continent. The thread has almost snapped many times, but it has never been severed. Though Canada’s progress has often seemed to be a freakish sequence of usually trivial events only rarely punctuated by anything grand and dramatic, it has been invincible, the past reveals the future.”

So my point in reading that paragraph is this, he said that Canada’s history has often seemed to be a freakish sequence of usually trivial events, rarely anything grand and dramatic, but that landscape was changed, and it wasn’t changed first and foremost by a Canadian, but by the American president. There’s another irony of history, and perhaps for Lord Black the necessity of a new chapter.

Part III

---

100 Days Into a Second Term: No Doubt President Trump’s First 100 Days Have Been Historic and Energetic, But Things Get Complicated Going Forward

All right, coming back to the United States, the big news here is 100 days. And so it was officially yesterday that the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, observed his 100th day in office in his second term. And of course the media went ablaze with this, the commentary, it came alive with all kinds of suggestions about the status of the second Trump term after 100 days. And that might seem a bit artificial, and after all that means there’s something like 1400 days left.

But nonetheless, when you think about the first 100 days, why is that important? And to understand that you have to go back in history to 1933. In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President of the United States, and that was in the midst of what was known as the Great Depression. And President Roosevelt looked at the Hoover administration, that was his predecessor in office, President Herbert Hoover, whom he had defeated in the 1932 election, he saw him as a picture of inadequate energy, inadequate action. President Roosevelt, when he was Governor Roosevelt running for office, he made the pledge that if elected he would bring about an absolute surge in political activity, he would offer presidential leadership, there would be executive actions, and that’s exactly what he did. He invited the public to analyze his first 100 days as a contrast to what was seen as the lack of action by his predecessor in office. Ever since then, new presidents, or new presidential terms, have often been marked by an analysis after 100 days.

Okay, so 100 days into the second term of President Donald Trump. What’s the first thing you think of? Well, it is action. The President has issued more than 100 executive orders, and when you look at President Trump, it is clear that in a sense he is emulating the energy in the executive that was declared by Franklin D. Roosevelt upon his arrival in office in 1933. The first 100 days in both cases, full of executive actions.

But in both cases that means something very interesting, and that is that after that very big surge of executive energy, and by the way, I appreciate so many of those executive orders, I think so many of them are important. I mean even something as fundamental as declaring that the Trump administration would have the United States government recognize two and only two genders, that’s absolutely massive, a tremendous gain of clarification. But in the Roosevelt 100 first days, and in the second Trump term, the 100 first days, but that leads to something interesting, and that is that the follow-up is often slower than the initial surge of activity. And that’s because many of these things now have to be turned into policy, a lot of them will have to be turned into legislation if they’re going to be lasting.

The other thing to observe here is that many of these things end up in court. That was true for President Roosevelt in the 1930s, it’s going to be true for President Trump. So many of these issues end up in court because those who are opposed to the executive actions, or even the threat of future executive actions, they go to the federal courts in order to try to win their case there, and they’re arguing that with three co-equal branches of government, it is the role of the federal judiciary to check unchecked executive power.

At this point, I think it’s fair to say that President Trump’s flurry of executive action has achieved at least one thing, and that is the Democratic Party is hardly in the news, and that’s not an exaggeration. The party has not found a firm footing, the opposition party hasn’t found a clear message, President Trump has basically taken up most of the oxygen and almost all the political space. But, again, just as a reality, that can’t last forever.

Something else to note is that when there is a flurry of this kind of activity, it isn’t clear exactly what the American people like and dislike, and some of this is found out, only discovered once it happens. So for example, it is really clear that President Trump’s flurry of executive activity, for instance, in gaining control of America’s borders, that has met with overwhelming support. And quite honestly, it’s so overwhelming that I think President Trump and his administration think that it will cover for other things that are less popular.

Speaking of less popular, it turns out that the American people want the border control, but the American people are nervous about deportations of persons when it is under a questionable circumstance and without, at least it is claimed, without due process. And clearly the battle over what constitutes due process is going to be something that takes up more time and perhaps even more sustained energy than the original executive actions. But that is going to come, there is going to have to be some determination of the legal status of these actions. But my point is, Americans want the border controlled and President Trump delivered on the control of the border.

When it comes to how to deal with persons who are here illegally, the American people are not so united. It’s going to be interesting to see how the President makes his case not only to the courts, but to the American people on that issue over time. There’s some technical things here that we’re just going to have to unpack, such as the fact that when it comes to children and others, it is often something that just comes not so much under the control of the administration, but even as a call made by parents, and this is a complicated situation, we will be tracking this together.

When it comes to other issues, the most important game changer has been the president’s declaration of a trade war, basically, his declaration of a tariff policy, and it is by no means so widely supported as some of his other actions. That’s not to say that Americans are instinctively against such a policy, they are against economic uncertainty, and they are certainly against economic trouble. And so the big question is, what will be the result of these tariffs? And at least given the scale of what the President is attempting, there’s going to be a great deal of disequilibrium, and the question will be, what is the disposition of the American people to that disequilibrium?

One thing is constant basically throughout all time in American politics, and regardless of the party context, the situation is this: the American people watch prices very carefully. For President Trump, that has to be the most dangerous aspect of his tariff policy. Americans, they aren’t going to take time to figure out all the intricacies of a trade war and the impact of tariffs, they will know exactly how much they’re paying for what they have to buy.

Part IV

---

Reality Won in Britain, But Will it Stand? Continuing Controversy Over Britain’s Supreme Court Ruling That Trans Women are Not Women

One final issue for today, we’re going to leave both Canada and the United States and go to the United Kingdom, we’re going to go to Britain. And remember, the Britain Supreme Court, just a matter of weeks ago, made an absolutely necessary and fundamentally important decision in handing down a ruling that when it comes to non-discrimination law in Britain, when it says female, it means female, and when it says male, it means male, and that’s a biological reality. Basically, it is an affirmation of the fact that biological sex is gender identity in accordance with and as a foundational understanding for the law.

There’s more to it than that, it did come from Britain’s Supreme Court. One of the most interesting responses has come from the transgender community. And, for example, you had a spokesperson saying this was an historic setback for trans rights. Others are going beyond, and I was particularly interested in a statement made by Diana Thomas, the person identified here in the Independent. This person, spokesperson for a transgender identity, and I guess in this case it means a biological male claiming a female identity, Thomas said, when it comes to ladies bathrooms, “We stand in line, do our business, and leave.” In other words, this is much ado about nothing.

But here’s the point, people on both sides of the Atlantic recognize this is not much ado about nothing, that’s why there is widespread support not only for the control of the border, there’s also widespread support for the fact that boys shouldn’t play on girls teams, etc. Or be in girls bathrooms, etc. But I’m also going to this source because the end quote from this individual was this,  “And the Christian nationalist spreading lies to eradicate transgenderism won’t stop with us, they’re coming for abortion rights. They’re coming for gay rights, you could be next.” Oh yeah, that’s the threat. That’s not to say there’s not a connection between those issues, but it is to say that what this person fears is what I think most of us would hope for, and that’s a more comprehensive return to sanity. But you hear the warning, you could be next.