Please Advise! Should Canadians Fear the Return of Trump?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

What do you think Trump's victory will mean for Canadian politics?

Signed,

Fretting

Dear Fretting,

Well, BC Conservative Leader John Rustad certainly seems enthused about Trump's win. “I’m hopeful for a win with Trump. It's going to change a couple of things,” Rustad told CTV.

Hard to argue with that. Bruce Springsteen might move to Nelson. True crime shows will change too. Henceforth, every episode of Dateline NBC will end with a verdict: “We, the jury in the above entitled action, find the defendant: the next president of the United States!”

More changes might come with RFK Jr. in charge of American health care. We could see new opportunities in the pharmaceutical leech trade. Goodbye fluoride, hello mercury and bloodletting. A worm in every brain! And the return of asbestos insulation, plus smoking on airplanes. It's time to get government out of the lungs of the free. (The theory that RFK stands for Really Freakin' Krazy, not Robert Francis Kennedy, gained traction last week when he told an MSNBC interviewer that, unlike the American cereal, Canadian Froot Loops contain only “two or three ingredients.” But he's right. The Canadian ingredients: 1. Sugar. 2. Corn flour. 3. Enriched uranium. Once he takes over, it'll all be legal in the U.S. by next year.)

Politically the effects are sure to be felt. Late night TV host Stephen Colbert recently called Pierre Poilievre “Canada's Trump.” If that is true, will we see the Conservative leader adopt even more Trump tactics? Riding around in garbage trucks, simulating sex acts on a microphone, threatening firing squads while decked out in makeup like a four-year-old who just found Mom's purse?

In the wake of Trump's victory, it's likely a whole new class of political strategists might emerge. They will instruct their clients to follow the winning formula. “If you're not talking about Arnold Palmer's huge penis,” they will say, “you are losing. Say you'll protect women whether they like it or not. The ladies of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin endorsed that approach. Try to find some strategic bloc of voters whose homeland can be tagged as 'an island of floating garbage.' Remember, they don't call this a 'race' for nothing.”

Some things might not change as much as Americans would like to think, though. When Trump wins elections, many Americans think about moving north. Wait until they find out Canada just cut its immigration quotas. Worse yet, imagine moving here from Texas and getting your first look at the Canadian polls where Maple Musk, the House hobgoblin, is ahead by 20 points. It could be like fleeing The Handmaid’s Tale and landing in Lord of the Flies.

Anyway, Fretting, thank you for your question. Dr. Steve is touched. Just by posing it, you are showing an encouraging faith in punditry, when an unkind person might suggest we have just been exposed as a pack of quacks. Endless, minutely detailed analysis of every utterance during the U.S. presidential campaign, and it turns out it all meant nothing. We pored over Donald Trump's economic policies — tariffs, tariffs, tariffs and deporting the agricultural workforce — that were clearly a prescription for sufficient inflation to pump up a field of bouncy castles. No matter.

Pundits figured people who vote pocketbook issues might object to getting their pockets picked. Turns out we overthought it. Americans saw that prices were up, and that Trumped everything. The oh-so-wise chattering classes were like a troupe of actors performing the complete works of Shakespeare, only to have the theatre lights come up to reveal an audience of ferrets.

Gustave Flaubert wrote: “Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.” The Dems aimed for the stars. Trump made the bears dance.

Perhaps the coming years will be like the return of Prohibition. Those looking for a straight shot of climate analysis with a chaser of common sense will whisper the password through darkened doorways, then gather surreptitiously to drink deeply of science and rational thought, scattering when JD Vance’s troops kick the door in.

Or perhaps people will lose themselves in the realms of fantasy. There are more Star Wars movies in the works. It's comforting to immerse yourself in a world where the people of Alderaan don't vote for the Death Star.