After the collapse of our Bridge

Gordie Howe must be rolling in his grave. The guy that patented the elbows up concept must be crying to see the willingness of Canada to give up without even trying to go into the corner. There were so many options available, including leaving the bridge closed for a while and holding all kinds of events on the Canadian side including inviting Bruce Springstein and other friendly &/or Canadian artists to put on some concerts, holding some serious farmers’ markets, maybe even staging drag races… charging participants/sponsors to pay to rent spots for sales events, or concerts or other activities. Probably could have made enough in three months to at least pay the interest.

Secondly, as one of my good friends said, why not file a claim in Michigan courts claiming bribery on the part of the owners of the Ambassador Bridge and flush out how much was paid to POTUS to get him to interfere. Remember, the original deal was between Michigan and the government of Canada. Now my friend has a naive understanding of how court cases in the states proceed; but, even the threat would have received incredible news coverage in the right, centre and left media outlets. Moreover, it would have pointed out one more time how expensive life is becoming in the USA with all the breaking of contracts let alone relationships with a former friendly nation.

But perhaps the biggest loss is not the immediate financial payouts we are foregoing, it is the obvious unwillingness of the government of Canada to stand up and deliver on what was promised in the last federal election. The Liberals promised that even if it was to cost us, they were going to make sure that Canada’s independence was sacrosanct and that we were going to have our elbows up. There was much swooning after that powerful speech at Davos – here was something the Conservatives could never do, tell the world that Canada was going to be a leader of the middle powers. Wow, what leadership: every time the bully POTUS says or does something against us, we quickly backtrack or sidetrack or no-track. One small example: Doug Ford takes out ads in the USA. The bully is incensed. The federal government orders the ads withdrawn. Boy did we show them, eh?

No matter what anyone might try to say to me now, the Gordie Howe Bridge collapse says it all. We are not going to fight, we are instead going to try to become a preferred 51st State (mind you more a vassal state, but a state beholden to a bully nonetheless). More Americans like us, than we like Americans or so a recent poll stated. Are we leveraging that? No. We are afraid to make the case directly to the Americans the reality of who is paying for the tariffs; in fact we are putting some of our own on to further hurt ourselves and indirectly justify the actions of POTUS.

We paid for the Bridge. We had a contract with Michigan. We gave in the first moment the bully yelled at us. How would you feel if after paying an increase in your provincial taxes the neighbouring province said that you could no longer use the highway between the two jurisdictions unless you paid a toll to them? But you say, you paid for the highway in the first place and they simply said what are you going to do about it? Would you as a first step, give in?

I have a shaky feeling that the Bridge collapse, is simply the harbinger of bigger collapses to come. The upcoming trade negotiations are going to be the biggest sell-off since the federal government abandoned Corel for Microsoft because of pressure from the USA and then gave up on Blackberry for i-phones because some federal public servants wanted their phones to have all kinds of apps instead of secure made-in-Canada devices primarily for communication. We have a history that was mocked in the last election with talk about now being tough. Oh yeah, we are tough alright, like old leather belts that no longer will buckle up but rather break apart and thus let one’s pants fall down.

Poor Gordie Howe, his name now will be linked to the great cave-in, his elbows defanged and his sense of purpose to win every time — besmirched.

Pondering the next slippery slope the government of Canada may be looking to slide down…
g.w.