Good Sunday Morning!
Last Sunday I had an unusual day – although when I wrote you first thing in the morning from Guelph, I had no idea how much a Sunday of train travel to Montreal could become exciting. Such are the times we live in!
I ended up writing a public statement (that you may have received through another channel) with an update on Sunday’s goings on.
February 2, 2025:
At 5:30 ET today, Groundhog Day or Candlemas, depending on your tradition, all party leaders gathered through electronic means to reflect on Canada’s reaction to the unprecedented and illegal actions of US President Donald Trump. The Prime Minister updated us on yesterday’s thought process, once President Trump made clear if Canada retaliated, he would make punishments more severe. Provincial premiers and Cabinet and other advisors felt this was not the time to back down. The Prime Minister shared that it had become increasingly clear that there was no evidence or further actions on border security that would make any difference. Trump would only double down. It was not really about fentanyl. It was about Canada and our sovereignty. All of us spoke to that point and agreed, Jagmeet Singh, Pierre Poilievre, Yves Francois Blanchet and me, although with differences, those need not be highlighted here. Our message was one of solidarity. I told them all I was following through on an idea I shared when we last met on December 3, 2024, that the Washington DC National Prayer Breakfast (February 6, 2025) might be a good time for Canadian parliamentarians to go to Washington. In that sense I feel I now have a collective mandate from all leaders to bring a message to Washington that Canada is united in this.
With apologies to the leaders, I asked to share an anecdote. Something small but extraordinary in my experience. I was worshipping this morning for the first time at a Lutheran-Anglican church in Guelph Ontario. As is the custom of many congregations, announcements come at the end of the service. An elderly gentlemen seemed not to be expected to go to the front of the church to make his own announcement. He said words to the effect of “I am so upset by what is happening. I want to be able to talk about it. I want to know that all Canadians will stand together. That we will stick together through whatever may come. O Canada is in our hymnal, and I would like us all to sing it now.” Delicately the priest suggested that as the service was over, we should all move to the hall, and so, as coffee and tea were served in the fellowship part of the gathering, a congregation in Guelph stood and with lusty voices and a few tears in our eyes, sang “O Canada!”
I suggested maybe there was a way to offer Canadians more specific ways they could sign up to help.
I also voiced my thanks.
The Prime Minister and Cabinet deserve our thanks, collectively. Premiers acting together deserve our thanks.
It was in my parents’ generation that ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances made sacrifices for the greater good. The thought of sacrifice has been unfashionable for quite a while. Immediate gratification is expected. Maybe now through collective strength and shared purpose we can persuade Mr. Trump to back down. Maybe. But odds are this idiotic trade war may take some time. It is likely to do real damage to vulnerable people and small businesses that will need our help. We are called upon to put country first. In that, we agree that burdens across industries and regions be shared. We must ensure that those most vulnerable and living in the greatest precarity be attended to first. We must find ways to fund our collective and unified response to the US President, who yesterday broke a goodly number of treaties, international norms and laws. Our effort must be to remember that the US is full of people who disagree with their President. We must remember that even someone who appears to be determined to do the wrong thing at every turn is capable of changing his mind. All efforts must be made to stay friends and neighbours.
Still, we must not back down. We will likely have to do much more to protect Canada and others in Trump’s cross-hairs. We fear for those soon to be refugees, headed for an illegal detention camp at Guantanamo Bay or worse.
We need to respect and follow international law. We must build and fortify alliances – political, economic and diplomatic – defending those elements of multilateralism we once took for granted. Democracy and respect for human rights, climate action and collective work for a better world must not be abandoned. We will not panic. Canada can emerge stronger, more resilient, more self-sufficient.
We do this together.
Not long after I wrote the above, the next day in fact, as you likely saw in the news, the US President decided to give Canada and Mexico a reprieve from his 25% tariffs order. We have until March 4 to find out what he has in mind for our trade relationship. No one knows whether he will claim victory, having forced us to spend $1.3 billion on border security and establish a “fentanyl Czar” (whatever that is) and move on…but I doubt it. My time in the United States has done nothing to reduce my growing sense of alarm. Trump is not only unpredictable, he is dangerous.
By late Monday my train delivered me to Penn Station, New York, where I stayed with friends who work at the United Nations. We shared the sense of ricocheting bad news and worse news in all directions from Trump’s executive orders. The fact that Elon Musk, unelected and over-empowered, had shut down the development assistance arm of the US government, USAID, was the latest shocker. Millions of lives are saved around the world by USAID and its work fighting HIV-AIDS is irrelevant to Trump. Even the U.S. military had warned him that cutting USAID would mean the US would have to spend more on armaments, did not stay his hand. Like an Emperor, he gives Elon Musk instructions. I imagine it is “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” There is nothing about this decision-making that suits a democracy or respects the rule of law. To have the President cancel whole branches of government is unconstitutional. Congress has approved the agencies and their spending. But Trump has seized that power and no one seems to know how to stop him. That he has delegated his billionaire buddy to slash whole agencies only adds another layer to the dizzying disarray of chaos he is sowing.
Here are some random reflections, notes from the front lines. The New York taxi driver who took me back to Penn station for my trip to DC was unsettled. He said every day he is busy driving people to the airport who are put on military planes and deported. Planes of people shipped out every day. The Immigration people (ICE) are conducting raids. No one feels safe.
In Washington, I stayed with a Canadian friend married to an American. A member of his family had been an employee of USAID. She found herself locked out of her office and frozen out of all her accounts and emails, with no notice. 13,000 AID employees, most working in developing countries, and many in Washington, are out of work. Trump and Musk have also said they are shutting down the Department of Education.
Then came Natanyahu’s Washington visit and Trump’s declaration that the USA would “take over” Gaza. Move out the Palestinian people while he razes what is left after years of Israeli bombardment to create the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Trump describes it in terms of a real estate deal. The words “two state solution” do not enter into his grand plan for the region. A Palestinian state is not discussed. Once he completes his “fixer-upper” resort he will “give Gaza back to Israel.” The number of international laws and norms he is breaking in this breathtaking proposal start with the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention protecting the rights of Occupied People, as well as numerous accords, routinely ignored by the parties, like the 1993 Oslo Accords.
My friends in Washington, some from environmental groups, some from charitable foundations, and many from senior positions in the civil service, are reeling. They discuss and debate whether this is more like the 1950’s red-scare era of Joseph R McCarthy or more like 1935 Germany. The gathering consensus favours comparisons and warnings of 1935.
It is chilling that FBI agents have hired lawyers to obtain an injunction to stop the planned release of their names. Trump and Musk are after personal information about FBI agents and Department of Justice officials who investigated, prosecuted, and convicted the violent rioters and insurrectionists of January 6. Trump has pardoned the violent thugs and they are now bent on revenge. Let loose the mob.
One friend – senior and well-informed – thinks Trump spent the last four years identifying the institutions and organized forces – whether judicial, legal or bureaucratic that opposed his most outrageous impulses. Even the Joint Chiefs of Staff had gotten in his way. After four years of planning, he has let loose a barrage of purges that will forever change the US. My friend thinks there will never be free and fair elections again in the US. I have to hope he is wrong.
Friends speak of fear of brownshirts at their doors. They are not speaking metaphorically. They are frightened.
I was in the room, and not far from the podium as President Trump addressed the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday morning. His was not a prayerful reflection. It was a stream of consciousness of random appeals to his base. He invoked God as though God was a political movement. He started with a triumphant “We are going to bring back Religion, Bigger. Stronger and Better than ever!” He spoke of how he likes to hire people who have made lots and lots of money. “People want me to hire people who have totally failed.” But, Trump says, Elon Musk is doing “a hell of a job, He is catching them… Finding where they took millions and billions of dollars. It was criminal, but Elon is catching them now.” (he never really explained who “they” were.” His opponents?). He said the previous administration had “opposed God.” Remember when we were not allowed to say “Merry Christmas?” said Trump, well Merry Christmas is coming back. And we have said “Woke is Gonzo.” He bragged of having gotten boys out of girls sports. And then spoke of the devastation of Hurricane Helene, having recently toured North Carolina. And then the scorched communities of Los Angeles. “Where rich people’s houses, people who were very rich their houses were burnt to the ground.” I should not have been surprised that what had made Trump feel a sense of the catastrophic was that the rich were not spared the fires. That clearly is not his worldview. It all felt so deeply incongruous, surrealistic. Touching on climate events with, of course no reference to the climate crisis. “It is only 17 days since I took the oath of office and I’ve been so busy.” Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, the World Health Organization, just some of his executive orders.
I guess it was something of a relief that he only mentioned Canada once and that was when he spoke of unleashing the water from reservoirs, “the water comes from up north.. Canada I guess… And they did not want to let me do it…” He never mentioned wanting to annex Canada.
The good news is that in meetings with congressional staffers to many Republicans over several days, not one thought that Canada had been less than a good friend, none wanted a trade war, and the Canadian Embassy in Washington had delivered so many fact sheets that at least the staffers knew the line about drugs and illegals crossing the border was just not true, So in that sense, I think the threats of tariffs and economic damage will have back channel and quiet opposition from Republicans. Those trade threats are the very least of the threat Trump poses to the world. Based on his blitzkrieg round of opening orders his plan is for total power. It is expansionist and anti-democratic.
Canada must be resolute. One staffer, working for a Democrat thanked me – “Canada is the only country standing up to Trump. It is hard to stand up to a bully. And we are so grateful that Canada is not backing down.”
To help people find what goods and products are truly “made in Canada” a friend sent along this website.
In other good news I am so very grateful that 90% of Green members voted for co-leadership and that Jonathan Pedneault and I face the next election together as co-leaders. We have a sense of global responsibility. And we will not let you down.
Prime Minister Trudeau said on Friday that he thinks Trump seriously wants to annex Canada to get our resources. We will not back down. Whatever it takes, we will defend our country – and our planet. All beings and all creatures. If this is 1935, we must not lose a moment in starting the work of Resistance.
Love and praying for peace.
In solidarity
Elizabeth
P.S. I managed to visit the US without spending any money on restaurants, hotels or other purchases. I did spend money on taxis! One driver in Washington was originally from Sudan. After 35 years in the US he is scared. He is a US citizen. His 15-year-old son Mohammed was born in the US – loves the only country he has ever known and is scared. There are ICE raids in DC too. A lot of people asked advice about moving to Canada.
Also, a huge thank you to those who clicked on the Get a local sign link to add their name to our reserve sign list. We now have 119 sign requests – a great start towards our goal of blanketing the riding in Green! Signs will be installed by our amazing Sign Team volunteers on the day that the election is called, and picked up after the election is over”.
…………………………………………
Please send your feedback on this newsletter to [email protected].
Saanich-Gulf Island Greens publish two newsletters:
- The monthly SGI Greens Newsletter
- The weekly Good Sunday Morning — Elizabeth May’s perspective
To subscribe to one or both of these go to sgigreenparty.ca/signup_2020.
Click here to unsubscribe from one or both newsletters.
Our archive of past editions is at sgi.edagreens.ca/news-events.
Saanich-Gulf Islands Greens
https://www.sgigreenparty.ca/