Canadians have never been known as tough guys. We have always been America’s quaint, sometimes kooky, but ultimately harmless neighbour—sweet bumpkins, clueless to the big bad world America was fighting on our behalf. While Canadians were busy watching hockey and putting up deer fence in their gardens, America was protecting their economy and imagined sovereignty. Canadians have been able to live in safety and peace, with a decent economy to boot, on account of their border and relationship with the US. Now, they’re playing tough with the bigger brother whose armpit they were tucked safely behind all this time. To their own demise.
We had a good run with our surprisingly good (albeit odd) comedy history, our toques, our beer (eh), and our healthcare, but over the past decade, Canadians have become among the most propagandized—and thereby not just annoyingly sanctimonius, but dangerous—people in the world. This is thanks to a tiny, government-funded media landscape and legislation like the Online Streaming Act, which allows the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), a government agency, to filter what Canadians see online.
We used to know that we were mostly irrelevant and that our role was to provide resources, natural beauty, confusing names for our coins, moose jokes, and pleasantries. No longer. Our government and media decided our modern role was to be take wokeness to new heights. We were going to take direction from Canada’s antifa, hand our homes and street names over to Indigenous tribes, and make child sterilization and mutilation our national pride.
It is on account of our abiding trust of government, view of ourselves as Most Good, and vulnerability to propaganda that it was so easy to stir Canadians up into a tizzy over a fake threat in the form of President Trump, then elect the man installed by Justin Trudeau, Mark Carney, to stay the course. That the mortifying “elbows up” crew—the same people who hid in their homes throughout Covid, terrified of a cold, reporting their neighbours for having grandma over for Christmas dinner—bought the Liberals’ story that Trump was coming for their “sovereignty” so swiftly should tell you all you need to know about their willingness to believe anything offered to them by the CBC and their Facebook algorithm.
By late 2024, support for the Liberal Party was in the tank, thanks to their authoritarian Covid response, treatment of the Truckers, and destruction of the economy. Nearly half of Canadians were calling for Justin Trudeau’s resignation. Remarkably, this was all forgotten in an instant when provided with an opportunity to “fight” a “war” against their greatest ally, America.
