How mindless fear was able to “Trump” plain reality in Canada’s federal election

The famous phrase “we have nothing to fear but fear itself” means that the primary obstacle to overcoming challenges is not the perceived hardships themselves, but the fear of those challenges. It says that the debilitating emotion called fear can mindlessly paralyze action and prevent positive responses, while in reality, there's often nothing to fear that can't be addressed with courage and determination.

Irrational fear based on a lack of resilience and proactivity among most voting Canadians was on full display

United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt evoked “we have nothing to fear but fear itself” in his famous 1933 inaugural address to reassure and reinvigorate the American people during the Great Depression. It was intended to convey that the nation could overcome profound economic hardship, not because the underlying problems were trivial, but because the fear of those problems was the greatest obstacle to dealing with a huge economic decline. By encouraging citizens to confront their anxieties and focus on taking positive action, Roosevelt aimed to inspire confidence and restore the nation's will to overcome the crisis.

In essence, the phrase emphasizes that fear, particularly irrational or unreasoning fear, can be a more potent obstacle than the actual dangers it's associated with. By acknowledging and addressing the fear itself, individuals and communities can become more resilient and proactive in facing challenges.

Roosevelt was proven correct: America overcame the Great Depression economically stronger than ever.

Irrational fear based on a lack of resilience and proactivity among most voting Canadians was on full display on Monday, April 28 with the re-election of the Liberal Party under the leadership of the country’s chief fear monger, Mark Carney.

Even in his victory speech, where he should have reached out to foes and friends alike, he could not prevent himself from claiming:

As I’ve been warned, America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. But these are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never, that will never ever happen.

"Our old relationship with the United States, a relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over"

Carney also emphasized the importance of unity in the face of threats from Washington:

"We are once again at one of those hinge moments of history," he said. "Our old relationship with the United States, a relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over. The system of open global trade anchored by the United States, a system that Canada has relied on since the Second World War, a system that, while not perfect, has helped deliver prosperity for a country for decades is over. These are tragedies, but it's also our new reality. We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons."

These words well answered a question dozens of political pundits and professional pollsters have been asking themselves for weeks now, namely how much would Donald Trump help boost Mark Carney’s election prospects?

Yes, the Canadian federal election has yielded a Liberal victory, albeit one short of a majority government, an outcome Fox News and many other media at both ends of the political divide attribute to President Trump’s threats, real and alleged, against Canada’s economic well-being and sovereignty.

In short, Trump’s statements, including suggestions that Canada should become the 51st state, did indeed shift the voting intentions voting of enough people to re-elect a Liberal Party government.

On the eve of the election, Angus Reid, founder and chair of the Angus Reid Institute, told Fox News Digital, “It looks like there will be a Liberal government, which seems to be what the polls point to, and it would be a very big surprise if the Conservatives won.”

This was not idle speculation. Trump posted advice to Canadian voters on his Truth Social site on election morning saying, in part:

“Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st. State of the United States of America.”

Trudeau’s 2015 assertion that Canada is the world’s “first postnational state” with “no core identity”

A very tempting offer to be sure, not just in the Western Canada provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, where the separation movement is highest, but also among the 43% of young Canadians aged 18-34 who would vote to become Americans if citizenship and conversion of assets to Yankee dollars were guaranteed. Surely, this large number of potential “traitors” is testimony to the salience of our previous prime minister’s 2015 assertion that Canada is the world’s “first postnational state” with “no core identity.”

Where were such sentiments born if not in our education system where children have been indoctrinated for decades with a “hate Canada” ethos?

More important, who apart from the chronically fear obsessed would remotely believe that Donald Trump would ever try to violently absorb Canada against the will of its people, not to mention most Americans? Who beside those obsessed by fear of idle threats would fall for constantly changing tariff promises as anything more than Trumpian bargaining gambits?

Still, if our identity is as weak, negative, or undefined as Justin Trudeau and others believe, this has surely given Trump leave to pontificate on the advantages of absorbing a land mass with no unifying socio-cultural systems or symbols worth recognizing, let alone defending. How can any country survive when they are taught that all they share are countless examples of past injustices against and victimization of its non-European people?

Equally telling are polling numbers in recent months. An Angus Reid Institute survey released on December 30 showed the Conservatives in super-majority territory with 45% support, compared to the Liberals at 11%. The results of a poll released nearly four months later had the Liberals at 44% with a four-point lead over the Conservatives at 40%.

This polling data confirms that a concern over a job killing trade war with the U.S. and Trump’s threats to annex Canada as the 51st state quickly rallied support once again for the Liberal Party under Carney.

This rapid change over this short period also points to a weak core identity dominated by individual and family self-interest.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s failure to turn the dial from focusing on a consumer carbon tax

Evidence for this claim also comes from the April 16 electoral debate with conservative challenger Pierre Poilievre, where Mark Carney was quick to challenge Trump’s alleged plan to absorb Canada by declaring the American President to be the greatest threat our country is facing:

“This election [is about] the question of who will succeed, and who will face up to Trump,” Carney said in the French debate.

His comments came in direct response to Poilievre, who moments before had accused him of being too much like his predecessor Justin Trudeau.

“We are in a crisis. The most serious crisis of our lives," Carney reportedly added. “We have to react with strength, which will allow us to succeed with Trump.”

Reports also suggested that Carney was increasingly viewed as the candidate more equipped to take on the tough negotiations that Canada will face to ease the steep tariffs Trump implemented this year.

“This really has been an extraordinary election in that, by all rights, Canadians had it with the Liberals’ woke policies and with their misspending and didn’t like Trudeau,” Reid said.

“Between tariffs and threats of annexation, Trump became the single most important issue in the country overnight," said Reid. "That gave Mark Carney an opportunity to be the first out of the gate to say that we’re not going to put up with this — we’re a sovereign nation and we’re going to fight.”

Though neither Reid nor other pollsters mentioned “core identity” or “post-nationalism,” he also claimed that the Liberals’ improved showing was not just about Canadians warming to Carney, but also about Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s failure to turn the dial from focusing on a consumer carbon tax, which the Liberal leader cancelled on April 1 in his first act as prime minister, and “still reflecting on Trudeau long after he had gone, instead of jumping right away onto the Trump threat and becoming something that he would lead the charge on.”

Huge borrowing, massive public debt, unaffordable housing, reduced productivity, ethical breaches, a decline in global respect

The irony, in Reid’s view, is that “Trump imperilled the campaign of an individual who could be in many ways his stepbrother in Canada,” he said about Poilievre, who he called “mini-Trump,” and his “anti-woke,” smaller-government stance — “Trump-esque policies that the American right might want to see in Canada and certainly a lot of Canadians on the right want to see.”

Also, Poilievre has experienced a decrease in support for his Canada First message, which some reports indicate may be perceived as parroting Trump's America First agenda, though both are super-nationalist, core identity objectives.

Ironically, as Canadians will soon learn to their dismay, if Reid and others are correct about Trump’s massive influence on the election results, Carney’s victory is also a victory for nearly all Justin Trudeau’s policies, including climate change, massive spending and borrowing, and identity-driven “woke” politics.

If so, it’s more affirmation of the well-known aphorism that a good definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different outcome.

Yes, Justin Trudeau is gone, but his ideology is alive if not well in this fourth in a row win: huge borrowing, massive public debt, unaffordable housing, reduced productivity, ethical breaches, a decline in global respect, and growing national division on controversial race, culture, and gender issues.

As Troy Media has just argued:

“Mark Carney is an accomplished figure, well-known on the international stage as a former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor. But his emergence as the Liberal leader raises a serious question: Are Canadians being offered real change, or simply a different face for the same political agenda?”

This is a “political agenda” that was roundly rejected only a few months ago, an agenda that seemed destined to yield a majority Conservative government save for an irrational fear of Donald Trump’s alleged territorial ambitions and ever-changing job-killing tariffs.

Hymie Rubenstein, a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba, is editor of —REAL Indigenous Report.