Canada Retreats

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

The first signal to watch for after the election of Justin Trudeau as prime minister of Canada will be whether his Liberal Party government will abandon the country’s erstwhile allies to their own devices in the fight against the Islamic State. The Liberals had campaigned on, among other things, a promise to end Canada’s participation in the combat mission America has been leading. And they certainly won a mandate from the voters. All the more dismaying the prospect that they will abandon the fight.

Nor is America the only ally that will feel this sense of regret for Canada’s robust engagement in our common struggle. Stephen Harper’s defeat will be keenly felt at Israel. Mr. Harper had made a point of standing apart from the European hostility to the Jewish state. This prompted one frequent writer on the Internet, Dan Friedman, to send out a wire yesterday suggesting the election offered a “valuable lesson” for Israel — “don’t pin your hopes on the political fortunes of leaders in other countries.”

It strikes us as an apt point. We will never forget Senator Moynihan, on a visit to the Forward at a time when the Jerusalem Embassy Act was percolating in the Congress, warning against any attempt to fight the Battle of Jerusalem on Capital Hill. Neither Moynihan (now gone, alas) nor anyone else would suggest that Israel be indifferent to the political situation in America (or, since we’re put in mind of this by Canada, the Americas). Merely that neither Israel nor anyone else can count on it.

We understand that the outgoing premier was the primary author of his own defeat. This was certainly marked by Conrad Black in this week’s column, which reckons that Mr. Harper had become “sclerotically rigid, media-inaccessible, authoritarian and peevish.” Lord Black faults him for, among other things, making a “major election issue out of a woman wearing a face-covering niqab at a citizenship swearing-in ceremony after privately identifying herself.” Black called it a “shabby act of desperation.”

To the degree that it’s also an example of Trumpism, it’s a cautionary moment for America’s own conservative party, that is for the GOP — even if there is no exact parallel to Mr. Trudeau’s version of liberalism rising within the Democratic Party in America. Our most analogous leader is President Obama, who is on his way out. He has stranded millions out of work — or even the work force. Canada, which now has a higher unemployment rate than America, appears set to launch expensive new social programs to address this. “We beat fear with hope,” Mr. Trudeau said after he won. What Mr. Obama taught was that slogans of hope and change aren’t enough.


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