Victor Davis Hanson: Mark Carney Is Leading Canada ‘Right Over the Cliff’

by Victor Davis Hanson

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.

I know we’ve talked a lot about the current Canadian-American trade dispute, but it involves larger issues of globalism versus nationalism versus North American relations versus the United States paradigm versus the EU paradigm, etc., etc.

And what’s happened is I would call it [Canadian Prime Minister] Mark Carney’s fantasy house, Mark Carney’s dream house, Mark Carney’s imaginarium. He has no … It doesn’t seem like he has any connection with reality. His economy has lost 41,000 jobs. It depends on exporting to the United States 72% to 76% of all of its products.

That is going to be very difficult. It is now difficult. It’s going to be almost impossible if he continues. He has to keep his oil wells going, and given the fact that other provinces have not been ready and willing to make pipelines to the rich tar sands of Alberta, he depends on a 4 million-barrel export a day to the United States.

Some of it is thick tar sands, some of it has been diluted and is marketable elsewhere, but it’s a very good deal for Canada. When you talk about cutting that off, you’re talking about cutting your nose to spite your face. This would be the most self-destructive thing. The fact that Canada even mentions it shows that they’re entering a period of delusional thinking.

This new relationship with China, they’re bringing in 48,000 low-tariff, I think it’s only 6%, EVs. They’re going to ruin what little they had left of the Canadian auto industry. But more importantly, that trade agreement is ushering in a whole set of new agreements, some of them military.

Does Canada know, does Mark Carney know, that if Canada negotiates a special military relationship with China and it’s on our borders and we have NATO relations, that will endanger the alliance and it will permanently wreck the relationship between Canada and the United States?

The other thing that’s very disturbing is right now, as we speak, the European Union model is under assault, not by America, but by Europeans.

They don’t believe the socialist model of open borders, illegal immigration, dismantling fossil fuels, not using fossil fuel resources, subsidized expensive green energy, de-arming, disarming, whatever term we use, low fertility, works. They used to have, about a quarter-century ago, the 470 million Europeans, they had about the same gross domestic product as the United States.

Now they’re $10 trillion at least smaller. So, why is Canada emulating the EU failed model? Forty-five percent of your population was not born in Canada or their parents weren’t born. Why are you subsidizing green energy and you’re not utilizing this rich resource in Alberta? Why are you disarmed?

Why won’t you meet your 2% commitments? You may or may not have done it just one year, but why do you repeatedly not do that when you have such a vast nation and it is so exposed in a very dangerous world, in the Arctic, in the Northwest Passage, and the airspace over North America?

And the answer is your economic model does not allow you much margin. Your immigration model does not allow you much margin of error to compensate for these decisions that you’ve made for a weaker, poorer, more disunited Canada. You feel you can’t arm yourself because the United States will protect you.

You feel that you need a $50 billion surplus because the United States is far wealthier and you’re in dire straits.

Next problem. You don’t express your disagreement or anger at the United States over trade policy by warming up to, and allying with China, which is the greatest trade violator in history with its patent theft, copyright theft, dumping product below the cost of production, currency manipulation, forced labor camps.