Canada needs to stop being America’s doormat

When an Ebola-linked flight bound for Detroit got dumped in Montreal, Canada once again showed how reflexive deference to the US still works.

Know what I’m getting really sick of as a Canadian? Harmful deferentiality towards the US that persists despite all the “elbows up” rhetoric.

In the latest example, an Air France fight took off from Paris, heading for Detroit. Do you see anything Canadian in that at all? Canada does!

The airline had royally messed up and let a passenger board from the Congo, the current global headquarters of Ebola. American authorities refused to let the plane land in their territory since they had recently banned all passengers from the Congo, specifically due to the viral outbreak. So, Canadian authorities let the plane land in Montreal. Then they let everyone off and put the passenger in question on the next flight back to Paris.

Why couldn’t they have done all that in Detroit? Is a plane considered to be inside a country the moment it decides it has feelings about the flight? No passenger is technically inside any country until they go through customs anyway. Why did they have to dump it all on Canada? I’ll tell you why. Because they had a choice, and Canada is far too nice.

The answer should have just been “no.” Not “no, but let us convene an interagency working group to explore the emotional implications of saying no.” Just “no.” No getting into the intricacies of Ebola infection risk or whose fault it all is, either. Or whether the guy is actually infected or not. Forget dedicating any bandwidth to any of that.

Perhaps Canada figured that it was doing its buddy, France, a favor, saving it from its own vetting screwup. Again, not Canada’s problem. Let them fight it out with the US. Tell France to threaten to just land the plane on Lake Erie and wish them luck.

It would have actually been the perfect time for Canada to propose, “Hey guys, you know that Gordie Howe International Bridge that Canada paid to build, running from Windsor to Detroit, that Trump insists on blocking? How about we get that sorted out in time to land this plane? Then maybe Canada will be compelled to lift a finger to help out. Otherwise, looks like this is a ‘you’ problem.”

Canada needs to stop doing any and all favors for America that aren’t a net benefit.

It wasn’t that long ago that American authorities told Canada to arrest and hold the daughter of Huawei’s founder, Meng Wanzhou, the CFO of the Chinese company herself at the time, on a US extradition request as she transited through Vancouver airport. Canada complied – and was rewarded with a massive diplomatic headache lasting years, having inserted itself in a tug-of-war between Washington and Beijing. The kind that comes with the satisfaction of having ‘helped’ and the administrative burden of proving that you didn’t cause the problem in the first place. The allegations that made the mess Canada’s problem related to violations of American anti-Iranian sanctions by the Chinese multinational, despite Canada not even having any of its own sanctions against her or Huawei.

Anyone in France knows that Washington routinely uses criminal charges as a weapon of economic warfare to target foreign executives of companies they want to buy or pressure for criminal charges. It’s the blueprint that enabled General Electric to get its hands on the French nuclear know-how of Alstom, for example.

And what thanks did Canada get for any of these accommodations? Tariffs. Insults about being useless – except as a 51st state. And constantly being told by Trump that it’s freeloading if it doesn’t blow its defense budget on-demand in the US.

Worse, the US has just been outed as meddling directly in Canadian politics. Why else would a Michigan-based electioneering app, 10xVotes, promoted by the US Ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, of the Michigan GOP himself, end up with the data of registered Alberta voters on its hardware? Turns out it was passed the info by a pro-separatist Canadian group that had been working directly with the American app, linked to shady pro-Trump Republican business and political interests and peddled by the likes of Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, and Tucker Carlson – all of whom also happen to be egging on the Canadian separatists that they couldn’t have cared less about until recently, and against all legal and political reality.

And if that hasn’t stunk up the country enough, the US also recently said that it planned to open more federal drug enforcement offices in Canada. “From a DEA perspective, we’re keeping our eye on Canada,” DEA chief Terrance Cole said at a recent US Senate hearing. “We’re going to open two more offices in Canada, proposed for ‘27.” Lemme guess. There’s a huge fentanyl problem in Alberta. Near an oil pipeline. Am I close? Because there sure as heck isn’t one that directly affects the US from Canadian territory. What do you think this is? A flop house?

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has proven that Canadians have passive aggression in abundance. Telling Trump off in various ways that are intellectual enough to not get picked up by the American president’s finely tuned insult-sensitive radar as they sail over his head. Arguably the most obvious example being Carney’s speech in Davos a few months ago, basically saying that the era of US-led hegemony is over and everyone knew that the notion of it being a net benefit to citizens of the countries that kowtowed to it was a lie that leaders have all long known about but insisted on sticking with anyway.

Canada is no longer a footnote in someone else’s policy agenda. It is drafting its own, at long last. What remains unfinished is the transition from having an agenda to behaving like it is allowed to use it without prior permission. The doormat has only really been pulled halfway out. Go ahead and give it a good yank once and for all, guys. It will hurt a lot less than the alternative.