Business
Out-Trumping Trump: A Mission Without a Win
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Diplomacy is often a world of planned whispers and subtle signals to communicate complex messages. So, even sleepy folks noticed when the PM made a much-publicized bold (and seemingly impromptu) move and flew to Florida to play Trump-Whisperer. What was the PM hoping to get from that appearance? The best way to evaluate such diplomatic moves is to measure results against expectations.
From start to finish, the trip read like Trump’s move, when the president flew in a similarly bold and unanticipated fashion to pacify the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un –the “Little Rocketman.” Trudeau’s trip to see Trump was modelled on Trump’s Korean trip; it was an attempt to out-Trump Trump. That was the expectation.
Amid talk of nuclear weapons deployment, Trump surprised the world in 2017 by going to North Korea to meet with the leader of the most insular country on the planet, a man the traditional media painted as an irrational lunatic. That is not unlike the image of Donald Trump that CBC and the MSM chorus in Canada present.
Similarly, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau surprised his followers and detractors, by flying to Mar-a-Lago, the capital of Trump’s world. The purpose was not to avoid a thermonuclear war but a trade war between the two countries. Such a trade war would hurt both countries but could devastate the “vibecessing” Canadian economy, which the Trudeau government is desperately trying to perk up expecting a general election in months.
The news was leaked once the Prime Minister was in the air heading south. A flood of commentators, who pretended to have no authority to speak on the subject, began to discuss what the trip meant and how brave and bold, silly or foolish, the Prime Minister was for undertaking it. This was like the attention surrounding Trump’s journey to North Korea.
The most surprising aspect of the announcement was that Trump had previously mocked and ridiculed the North Korean leader. While we don’t have direct insight into what the North Koreans called Trump at the other end, it was probably far from flattering. Consequently, it was hard to imagine how their interactions would play out. Many argued that the two men had nothing in common, often expressing this with professorial certainty.
There is no evidence that Prime Minister Trudeau has ever called Trump any nasty names in public, but Trump has not been as careful. After the G7 meeting in 2018, Trump referred to Trudeau as being “weak and dishonest.” However, we do know that Justin’s favourite boogeyman is the American “extreme-right,” of which progressive Canadians think Trump is the godfather. Whatever Trudeau and prominent government ministers think of Trump conservatives, they also think of Trump. There are many examples of how government members weaponized the concept. In October 2024, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland addressed criticisms from Conservative MPs by stating she wasn’t intimidated by “juvenile playground insults from the wannabe MAGA maple syrup Conservatives.” Similarly, amid discussions about Prime Minister Trudeau’s leadership in October 2024, some government members referred to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre as “Maple MAGA” or “Canada’s Donald Trump,” expressing platitudes about threats to democracy. Readers might also recall how every lieutenant in the Trudeau legions pretended MAGA Trumpeteers and Trump himself had crushed Roe v. Wade and then claimed Canada’s Conservatives would do the same.
The PM, too, indulged in the same kind of attack during a July 2023 visit to the Baitun Nur Mosque in Calgary. During the event, Trudeau addressed concerns among the Muslim community regarding his support for the Transexual agenda and the claims of inclusive education in schools. He quickly invoked the anti-American narrative, shaming the man who posed the question for accepting what Trudeau labelled as radical right-wing American propaganda. Trudeau suggested that misinformation about Canada’s sexual education curriculum was being propagated by “the American right-wing,” which he argued was causing unnecessary division and fear among Canadians.
Many people were surprised to see Trump attempting what others had never tried in North Korea. That reaction was akin to that of Canadians who knew what Trudeau and his cabinet had said about Donald Trump and the American right. For Prime Minister Trudeau it was a victory to show pictures of his foray into Trumpian Mordor, giving him the chance to appoint himself the hero who will stop the detonation of a 20 percent tariffs trade bomb.
Immediately following the US election, the Trudeau cabinet quickly backtracked on the Trump insults. They suddenly forgot how they were presenting Trump as the figure behind Pierre Poilievre and his “extreme right-wing politics.” This was done with the same enthusiasm that Trudeau’s critics summon when joking about his supposed genetic connection to Fidel Castro.
Trump’s visit to North Korea reduced some of the heated rhetoric between the two countries; however, the North Korean Stalinist regime remains intact, along with its nuclear capabilities. Trump and Kim Jong-un did not sign any treaty to regulate nuclear weapons or establish lasting peace between their nations. Similarly, Prime Minister Trudeau returned from Florida without any significant outcomes.
There was no joint statement or announcement of an agreement. There were promises to continue discussions, which does not constitute a victory. All Trudeau can claim is a public relations victory like the one Trump touted after his return from North Korea, and that is not insignificant. But showing that Trump was not mean to him is hardly a diplomatic victory.
Trump provided Trudeau with opportunities for photo sessions without conceding anything or making any promises. He maintained his firm demand that Canada strengthen its border security to prevent drugs and potential terrorists from crossing freely. Trump takes satisfaction in the fact that a man he despises travelled to plead with him for leniency regarding his tariff threats. He is fully aware of this dynamic.
Prime Minister Trudeau may portray himself as someone who understands Trump well, but Trump holds the upper hand. He knows Trudeau is “weak” and desperately desires to maintain himself in power, despite his low popularity. Furthermore, Trump understands that Trudeau is willing to make significant political sacrifices to achieve a seemingly favourable resolution to the border issues. Trudeau badly needs a win, and Trump knows that Trudeau is willing to jeopardize his country’s economy to win. Consequently, Trump will likely capitalize on Trudeau’s vulnerabilities for all they are worth.
Trump understands that Trudeau is the ideal Canadian leader to engage with him, which should make Trudeau the least suitable person to negotiate with Trump if Canada’s interests are to be protected.
From that perspective, Trudeau’s trip to Florida is unlike Trump’s trip to North Korea. While both leaders sought to leverage their trips for political and public relations gains, the outcomes reveal the limitations of symbolic diplomacy and Trudeau’s inability to turn the trip into a long-term win. The latter is as much a function of the PM’s lack of skill as it is of the perception among voters that he is veritably done, no matter what.
Prime Minister Trudeau believes he is the only one who can deal with Trump from a position of strength, which is incorrect. His government has gimmicks but no strength left. That is why the prime minister pleads for a Team Canada approach to Trump and quickly condemns skepticism of his abilities as a national betrayal.
Trump will take advantage of that weakness –and if he can nail a man he despises as weak and woke, he will enjoy it the more. Out-Trumping Trump for domestic advantage was a fool’s errand.
Marco Navarro-Genie is VP Policy and Research at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He is co-author, with Barry Cooper, of COVID-19: The Politics of a Pandemic Moral Panic (2020).
Business
Nearly One-Quarter of Consumer-Goods Firms Preparing to Exit Canada, Industry CEO Warns Parliament
Standing Committee on Industry and Technology hears stark testimony that rising costs and stalled investment are pushing companies out of the Canadian market.
There’s a number that should stop this country cold: twenty-three percent. That is the share of companies in one of Canada’s essential manufacturing and consumer-goods sectors now preparing to withdraw products from the Canadian market or exit entirely within the next two years. And this wasn’t whispered at a business luncheon or buried in a consultancy memo. It was delivered straight to Parliament, at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, during its study on Canada’s underlying productivity gaps and capital outflow.
Michael Graydon, the CEO of Food, Health & Consumer Products of Canada, didn’t hedge or soften the message. He told MPs, “23% of our members expect to exit products from the Canadian marketplace within the next two years, because the cost of doing business here has just become unsustainable.”
Unsustainable. That’s the word he used. And when the people who actually make things in this country start using that word, you should pay attention. These aren’t fringe players or hypothetical startups. These are firms that supply the goods Canadians buy every single day, and they’re looking at their balance sheets, their regulatory burdens, the delays in getting anything approved or built, and concluding that Canada simply doesn’t work for them anymore.
What makes this more troubling is the timing. Canada’s investment levels have been falling for years, even as the United States and other competitors race ahead. Businesses aren’t reinvesting in machinery or technology at the rate they once did. They’re not modernizing their operations here. They’re putting expansion plans on hold or shifting them to jurisdictions that move faster, cost less and offer clearer rules. That’s not ideology; it’s arithmetic. If it costs more to operate here, if it takes longer to get a permit, and if supply chains back up because ports and rail lines are jammed, investors will choose the place that doesn’t make growth a bureaucratic mountain climb.
Graydon raised another point that ought to concern anyone who cares about domestic production. Canada’s agrifood sector recorded a sixty-billion-dollar trade surplus last year, one of the brightest spots in the national economy, but according to him that potential is being “diluted by fragmented interprovincial trade and logistics bottlenecks.” The ports, the rail corridors, the entire transport network—choke points everywhere. And you can’t build a productive economy on choke points. Companies can’t scale, can’t guarantee delivery, can’t justify the costs. So they leave.
This twenty-three percent figure is the clearest evidence yet that the problem isn’t theoretical. It’s not something for think-tank panels or academic papers. It is happening at the level that matters most: the decision whether to continue doing business in Canada or move operations somewhere more predictable. And once those decisions are made, they’re very hard to reverse. Capital doesn’t boomerang back out of patriotism. It goes where it can earn a return.
For years, Canadian policymakers have talked about productivity as if it were a moral failing of workers or a mystical national characteristic. It’s neither. Productivity comes from investment—real money poured into equipment, technology, training and expansion. When investment stalls, productivity collapses. And when a quarter of firms in a major sector are already planning their exit, you are not looking at a temporary dip. You are looking at a structural rejection of the business environment itself.
The fact that executives are now openly warning Parliament that they cannot afford to stay is a moment of clarity. It is also a test. Either this country becomes a place where people can build things again—quickly, affordably, competitively—or it continues down the path that leads to empty factories, hollowed-out supply chains and consumers who wonder why the shelves look thinner every year.
Twenty-three percent is not just a statistic. It’s the sound of a warning bell ringing at full volume. The only question now is whether anyone in charge hears it.
Business
Climate Climbdown: Sacrificing the Canadian Economy for Net-Zero Goals Others Are Abandoning
By Gwyn Morgan
Canada has spent the past decade pursuing climate policies that promised environmental transformation but delivered economic decline. Ottawa’s fixation on net-zero targets – first under Justin Trudeau and now under Prime Minister Mark Carney – has meant staggering public expenditures, resource project cancellations and rising energy costs, all while failing to
reduce the country’s dependence on fossil fuels. Now, as key international actors reassess the net-zero doctrine, Canada stands increasingly alone in imposing heavy burdens for negligible gains.
The Trudeau government launched its agenda in 2015 by signing the Paris Climate Agreement aimed at limiting the forecast increase in global average temperature to 1.5°C by the end of the century. It followed the next year with the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change that imposed more than 50 measures on the economy, key among them a
carbon “pricing” regime – Liberal-speak for taxes on every Canadian citizen and industry. Then came the 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan, committing Canada to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, and to achieve net-zero by 2050. And then the “On-Farm Climate Action Fund,” the “Green and Inclusive Community Buildings Program” and the “Green Municipal Fund.”
It’s a staggering list of nation-impoverishing subsidies, taxes and restrictions, made worse by regulatory measures that hammered the energy industry. The Trudeau government cancelled the fully-permitted Northern Gateway pipeline, killing more than $1 billion in private investment and stranding hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of crude oil in the ground. The
Energy East project collapsed after Ottawa declined to challenge Quebec’s political obstruction, cutting off a route that could have supplied Atlantic refineries and European markets. Natural gas developers fared no better: 11 of 12 proposed liquefied natural gas export terminals were abandoned amid federal regulatory delays and policy uncertainty. Only a single LNG project in Kitimat, B.C., survived.
None of this has had the desired effect. Between Trudeau’s election in 2015 and 2023, fossil fuels’ share of Canada’s energy supply actually increased from 75 to 77 percent. As for saving the world, or even making some contribution towards doing so, Canada contributes just 1.5 percent of global GHG emissions. If our emissions went to zero tomorrow, the emissions
growth from China and India would make that up in just a few weeks.
And this green fixation has been massively expensive. Two newly released studies by the Fraser Institute found that Ottawa and the four biggest provinces have either spent or foregone a mind-numbing $158 billion to create just 68,000 “clean” jobs – an eye-watering cost of over $2.3 million per job “created”. At that, the green economy’s share of GDP crept up only 0.3
percentage points.
The rest of the world is waking up to this folly. A decade after the Paris Agreement, over 81 percent of the world’s energy still comes from fossil fuels. Environmental statistician and author Bjorn Lomborg points out that achieving global net-zero by 2050 would require removing the equivalent of the combined emissions of China and the United States in each of the next five
years. “This puts us in the realm of science fiction,” he wrote recently.
In July, the U.S. Department of Energy released a major assessment assembled by a team of highly credible climate scientists which asserted that “CO 2 -induced warming appears to be less damaging economically than commonly believed,” and that aggressive mitigation policies might be “more detrimental than beneficial.” The report found no evidence of rising frequency or severity of hurricanes, floods, droughts or tornadoes in U.S. historical data, while noting that U.S. emissions reductions would have “undetectably small impacts” on global temperatures in any case.
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright welcomed the findings, noting that improving living standards depends on reliable, affordable energy. The same day, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed rescinding the 2009 “endangerment finding” that had designated CO₂ and other GHGs as “pollutants.” It had led to sweeping restrictions on oil and gas development and fuelled policies that the current administration estimates cost the U.S. economy at least US$1 trillion in lost growth.
Even long-time climate alarmists are backtracking. Ted Nordhaus, a prominent American critic, recently acknowledged that the dire global warming scenarios used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change rely on implausible combinations of rapid population growth, strong economic expansion and stagnant technology. Economic growth typically reduces population increases and accelerates technological improvement, he pointed out, meaning emissions trends will likely be lower than predicted. Even Bill Gates has tempered his outlook, writing that climate change will not be “cataclysmic,” and that although it will hurt the poor, “it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare.” Poverty and disease pose far greater threats and resources, he wrote, should be focused where they can do the most good now.
Yet Ottawa remains unmoved. Prime Minister Carney’s latest budget raises industrial carbon taxes to as much as $170 per tonne by 2030, increasing the competitive disadvantage of Canadian industries in a time of weak productivity and declining investment. These taxes will not measurably alter global emissions, but they will deepen Canada’s economic malaise and
push production – and emissions – toward jurisdictions with more lax standards. As others retreat from net-zero delusions, Canada moves further offside global energy policy trends – extending our country’s sad decline.
The original, full-length version of this article was recently published in C2C Journal.
Gwyn Morgan is a retired business leader who has been a director of five global corporations.
Chinese-Owned Trailer Park Beside U.S. Stealth Bomber Base Linked to Alleged Vancouver Repression Case
US Nuclear Bomber Fleet Shares Fence With Trailer Park Linked To Chinese Intel-Tied Fraudster
McKinsey outlook for 2025 sharply adjusts prior projections, predicting fossil fuels will dominate well after 2050
Laura Ingraham Presses Trump On Allowing Flood Of Chinese Students Into US
-
Alberta1 day agoNational Crisis Approaching Due To The Carney Government’s Centrally Planned Green Economy
-
Alberta1 day agoAlberta Offers Enormous Advantages for AI Data Centres
-
Alberta2 days agoCalgary mayor should retain ‘blanket rezoning’ for sake of Calgarian families
-
Bruce Dowbiggin1 day agoSports 50/50 Draws: Make Sure You Read The Small Print
-
COVID-191 day agoNew report warns Ottawa’s ‘nudge’ unit erodes democracy and public trust
-
Censorship Industrial Complex1 day agoQuebec City faces lawsuit after cancelling Christian event over “controversial” artist
-
Carbon Tax15 hours agoCarney fails to undo Trudeau’s devastating energy policies
-
Health15 hours agoNEW STUDY: Infant Vaccine “Intensity” Strongly Predicts Autism Rates Worldwide