Justin Trudeau offered to save migrants from Trump; 8 years later Canadians are still paying the price

On January 28, 2017, in the immediate aftermath of President Trump’s first travel ban, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sent out a tweet that would reverberate far beyond social media:

To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength. #WelcomeToCanada.”

Migrants and asylum-seekers in the United States took Trudeau at his word, and within weeks, illegal crossings over the Quebec-New York border surged, centered on a rural stretch known as Roxham Road.

The majority of the border-crossers are from Haiti; any of them could well have come from Springfield, Ohio, where the Biden administration dumped thousands of Haitian 'refugees.'

The surge was driven by a quirk in the Safe Third Country Agreement, a treaty between Canada and the U.S. dating back to 2004. Under the deal, asylum-seekers are supposed to file their claims in the first safe country they arrive in.

But the STCA applied only at official checkpoints. Those who walked across back roads like Roxham were exempt — and once on Canadian soil, they were entitled to have their cases heard. This loophole transformed Roxham into the busiest irregular crossing in the country.

Invite revoked

What began as symbolic anti-Trump signaling had become a full-blown crisis by the time Joe Biden took office in January 2021. Quebec’s shelters and reception centers filled beyond capacity, municipalities complained of mounting costs, and national polls showed Canadians increasingly skeptical of how the border was being managed.

The issue also spilled across the border. Even as Biden faced criticism for presiding over border chaos in Texas and Arizona, his administration quietly pressed Ottawa to rein in irregular migration to the north. In March 2023, Trudeau and Biden announced an expanded Safe Third Country Agreement that closed the Roxham Road loophole, giving Canadian officials authority to turn back asylum-seekers anywhere along the border if caught within 14 days of entry.

Smuggle session

The irony was hard to miss: Washington was leaning on Canada to tighten a rural crossing in Quebec at the very moment its own southern border remained mired in crisis. Trudeau’s lofty promise of welcome had ended, six years later, in a deal to keep more people out.

But Roxham Road is very much open today — thanks to organized crime groups making a tidy profit from smuggling people across the border.

A recent investigation by Rebel News confirmed reports of rampant human trafficking after Churubusco, New York, resident Jerry Miller contacted the conservative news outlet about an escalation in activity at the border.

According to Miller, the vast majority of those being surreptitiously moved across the border are from Haiti; any of them could well have come from Springfield, Ohio, where the Biden administration dumped thousands of Haitian “refugees.”

Haitians head north

Why are they heading north?

Their motivation to come to Canada could certainly be linked to Trump’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status for more than 500,000 Haitians living in the U.S. A Rebel News reporter found Haitian ID cards at the scene, along with discarded backpacks, clothes, and food.

In one night, a Rebel News reporter using an infrared camera caught 23 people crossing.

Hunter Robare, who lives on the same street as Miller, described the situation. "It's every day."

"It can be pretty nerve-racking," Robare added. "Just being at home and you have a group of people walking down the road; you don't know their intentions."

Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

Legal increase

Of course, this is just illegal immigration. Under Trudeau and continuing under Prime Minister Mark Carney, legal immigration increased at rates not seen in over a century.

The combination of chronic illegal immigration and lax legal immigration is producing a potential economic catastrophe for Canada, prompting Alberta Immigration Minister Joseph Schow to demand that the federal government accurately assess the illegal immigrant population.

“I’m not going to sugarcoat it: We believe there’s 500,000 illegal immigrants currently spread across Canada, and these individuals are benefiting from taxpayer-funded services,” said Schow.

Meanwhile, more than eight years after Trudeau's fateful invitation, the human traffickers at Roxham Road continue to thrive.

Freedom Convoy sentencing straight from anarcho-tyranny playbook

You may not have heard the term “anarcho-tyranny” in a while — maybe never. But it’s the only phrase that fits what’s unfolding in Canada right now: a system that punishes peaceful political dissent while letting real criminals off easy. It’s lawfare in service of regime security.

That was true under Justin Trudeau, and it’s even more apparent under his successor, Prime Minister Mark Carney — a globalist banker who cashed in on political connections and now presides over a government determined to crush dissent.

Even if Barber and Lich are granted the absolute discharge that their lawyers are requesting, the Liberal government has proven its point: Defy us, and we will ... ruin your life.

Drawn-out sentencing

Just look at the ongoing prosecution of Chris Barber and Tamara Lich, two of the main organizers of the 2022 Freedom Convoy — the trucker-led protest that captured global attention when thousands of Canadians rolled into Ottawa to peacefully demand an end to COVID-19 mandates and lockdowns.

The trial began shortly after Labor Day 2023. On April 3, 2024, the pair were found guilty of mischief, but nearly six months later, they still haven’t been sentenced. Their next court date isn’t until October 7.

That makes this the longest mischief trial in Canadian history.

Let’s be clear: Barber and Lich face up to eight and seven years in prison, respectively. For mischief. For organizing a protest. The Crown — Canada’s prosecution — has also filed a request to seize Barber’s truck, known as “Big Red,” an icon of the convoy.

Extraordinary harm?

At a sentencing hearing last week in Ottawa, Crown prosecutor Siobhain Wetscher argued that the two were “criminally responsible for extraordinary harm.” She’s pushing for a seven-year sentence for each, plus an additional year for Barber for “counselling others to disobey a court order.”

A separate hearing to decide on the truck’s forfeiture is set for August 12.

Meanwhile, the presiding judge, Justice Heather Perkins-McVey, admitted during the hearing that she was unaware that convoy participants and even donors had their bank accounts frozen by the Trudeau government under the Emergencies Act — a chilling use of power that shocked observers around the world.

Worse than manslaughter

Think about it: In Canada, people are routinely sentenced to six years for manslaughter. Rapists and violent criminals often serve far less. Car thieves are let out on bail and vanish. But organize a peaceful protest against the ruling party’s COVID regime? You get dragged through court for two years and potentially thrown in prison for nearly a decade.

Even if Barber and Lich are granted the absolute discharge that their lawyers are requesting, the Liberal government has proven its point: Defy us, and we will drain your finances, squander your time, and ruin your life. As both Barber and Lich have told me, “The process is the punishment.”

Courtesy Chris Barber

Third-world politics

This is not a free society. This is selective repression. Canada now only permits political protest that aligns with the Liberal Party’s agenda. March for climate, Pride, or Palestine? No problem. Challenge government overreach or reject the woke orthodoxy? Prepare for hell.

This is a Canada out of step with both Trump’s America — where woke politics and deep-state control are under attack — and much of Europe, where populist movements are rising, lockdown policies are being questioned, and citizens are reclaiming sovereignty from unelected elites.

To put it bluntly, this is third-world politics without the tropical weather.

The very idea that two peaceful protest organizers could spend eight years in prison should alarm anyone who still believes in democracy, civil liberties, or basic proportionality in the justice system.

But this is the state of Canada in 2025.

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Canada declares independence from Liberal censorship — with Donald Trump's help

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that his government would rescind the Digital Services Tax. Yes, Carney caved.

Canadians should be relieved.

Within 48 hours, the PM was on the mat, again acquiescing to Trump even after his finance minister had categorically rejected abandoning the tax.

The Liberal government enjoys inventing new ways to tax both Canadians and anyone doing business in Canada. Canada is the home of the Goods and Services Tax and the Harmonized Sales Tax.

Now it was about to have a DST.

Punitive taxation

Of course, taxation for globalists like Carney has nothing to do with raising money. He can always print more money. Taxation has become punitive — either punishing the poor hapless citizens with an ever-increasing tax burden or using taxation to prevent Canadians from receiving anything not officially sanctioned by the Liberal government.

In this case, it’s about restricting access to unacceptable news.

On June 30, U.S. tech companies operating in Canada were expected to begin paying the DST — a 3% tax on all their Canadian earnings. And it would have been retroactive to 2022. The cost was estimated to be over $2 billion, but the experts were probably lowballing it.

On June 27, President Donald Trump announced that if the DST was not scrapped, trade talks between Canada and the U.S. would be terminated.

We have a great relationship with the people of Canada, but it's been very difficult, and they put a charge, and they were a little bit early. We found out about it, and we have all the cards. We have every single one.

… So I said, we're going to stop all negotiations with Canada right now, until they straighten out their act.

Bluff called

Carney’s reaction was initially another example of his cocky, insouciant attitude, as he pretended there was nothing to worry about.

But within 48 hours, the PM was on the mat, again acquiescing to Trump even after his finance minister had categorically rejected abandoning the tax. Just another example of the president’s unique version of realpolitik.

STEFAN ROUSSEAU/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

The winners in the flip-flop are American tech companies and Canadians who have been given a reprieve from another odious piece of Liberal government censorship legislation.

War on bad thoughts

Under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Canada adopted Bills C-11, the Online Streaming Act, and C-18, the Online News Act, and came very close to passing Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, which would have jailed people for broadcasting “hate speech” and actually contained a thought crimes component that envisioned house arrest for people accused by neighbors of thinking bad thoughts.

Bill C-11 demands that foreign companies produce an acceptable amount of Canadian content on the internet, just as Canada has always demanded similar rules from television, radio, and print media.

Bill C-18 went a step farther and demanded that U.S. social media companies provide an annual stipend to the Canadian government if they post Canadian news content on their platforms. The result has been the death of Canadian news on Meta’s Facebook and Instagram sites because the companies have refused to submit to this extortion.

Storming Fortress Canada

The net effect is to entrench the influence of the mainstream media in Canada, which receives massive subsidies from the federal government; and to weaken independent media, which tends to depend far more on social media exposure.

The DST would have furthered this government control and passive censorship of the internet, because many U.S. companies would probably simply have refused to pay the tax and told the Carney government to move on.

For more than a decade the Liberals have been trying to create some kind of Fortress Canada in which independent and foreign voices have no power to shape the national narrative. It is a dangerous and toxic authoritarian experiment.

Canadians should thank Donald Trump for at least slowing the process down by getting his way on the DST.

The era of managerial rule is over. Long live the sovereign!

There’s a world before President Trump’s descent down the escalator, and there’s a world after it. The recent No Kings protests transmitted the idée fixe of the pre-2015 world. That idea was hostility to personal authority, or personal power — hostility to the notion of sovereignty, to the power once exercised by kings. Donald Trump, the figure who has dominated politics since 2015, is its most visible sign of contradiction. In that sense, the protesters weren’t entirely wrong. Trump’s success marks the passing of the world of the latter half of the 20th century, which was defined by hatred of personal authority.

Successive generations demolished the concept of sovereignty, casting suspicion on the notion that a leader’s decisions can legitimately reshape political or social life. This shift began in the United States when the intelligentsia promulgated the concept of “the authoritarian personality.” They found this personality in the working classes, their churches and associations, their families and fathers, and the politicians who represented them. Where there was the whiff of authoritarian character traits, fascism probably lurked.

All the elements of Trump’s personality that his opponents loathe have proved, for better or worse, to be demonstrations of strength rather than weakness.

The anti-authority impulse then extended to challenge the authority of elected bodies. Popular sovereignty became dangerous. In the late 1950s and '60s, on matters such as school prayer, unctuous judges and administrators tied the hands of potentially reactionary legislatures and frog-marched them toward secularism.

In the 1970s, the target was popular sovereignty as embodied in the office of the president. The American Constitution enabled an energetic executive or administrative presidency, traces of the monarchical form. But the president’s authority was decapitated in the great act of regicide — otherwise known as Watergate.

The ‘golden straitjacket’

Sketching the gloomy landscape of the 1970s, the sociologist Robert Nisbet saw in the twilight of authority the rise of impersonal forces; administrators touting “best practices” stepped into the breach. Therapists, managers, and other experts became increasingly important. They coordinated with economic, social, and legal networks to constrain human agents who might otherwise upset progress.

That’s what globalization was all about. At the peak of the era of what Thomas Friedman called “the golden straitjacket,” sovereignty was outré. Successful politicians such as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair dazzled their electorates with the bullion of cheap credit and narratives of an impending gilded age while tightening the bonds ever further. They weakened the power of their offices, distributing it to central banks and international agencies.

Their actions clarified the vocation of right-thinking people. Stigmatize the authoritarian personality. Banish any individual or group that displayed its signs from the helm of government and public life. Spin an ever-tighter web of legal, administrative, and economic networks that could remove the risks of exercising personal human control over government — the risks of an energetic executive — once and for all.

All that changed with Trump’s descent down the escalator. “The golden straitjacket” had numerous critics, but no major public figure exposed its hatred of political, personal power as aggressively and abruptly as Trump did. In 2015, he thrust personal authority back to the center of public life. It’s been there ever since, an example to imitate — in enthusiasm or envy.

Restoring the executive

As president, Trump has fought hard to restore the bloodied Article II of the Constitution. His executive and legal actions on behalf of presidential power even won over skeptics in the conservative legal world. Not only did he challenge the presuppositions of government via the administrative state, but he also exposed the overreaching deep state that is devouring the American Constitution.

Indeed, No Kings could very well function as a pro-Trump slogan. Prior to Trump, American presidents largely functioned as kings. Like the monarch in Great Britain, U.S. presidents had long held power in theory as the “dignified” branch, while other actors in the security state made the real decisions — the “efficient” branch. Trump has been his most republican when he has upset this double government.

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

To be sure, anti-Trump No Kings protesters are more troubled by another phenomenon: Trump’s personal style of leadership. They’re not wrong to draw attention to it, but they’re wrong about its significance.

Authority depends on a person’s capacity to command in order to reshape politics. Trump mastered the new fragmented media environment, in which entertainment — rather than solemn statements — wins attention and deference. Trump made his personality an issue. His critics attacked him for it, claiming his persona was a manifestation of the dreaded authoritarian personality. But all the elements of Trump’s personality that his opponents loathe — rhetorical and physical aggression, incivility, scorn for discourse and discussion, brashness, maleness, unwillingness to apologize or express guilt, bluntly demarcating between American winners and losers, claiming the exceptional power to fix America’s problems — have proved, for better or worse, to be demonstrations of strength rather than weakness.

The importance of character traits such as “caring for people like me” or “experience,” which had mattered so much in late 20th-century mass democracy, faded away. Swaths of the electorate would of course still look for their “therapist in chief” or “expert in chief.” But more wanted a boss who asserted control and expected those under him to follow his lead.

The reassertion of personal authority, after decades of opposition to it, has been a messy affair. It’s risible to think that Trump ever intended to abolish elections, set up a dictatorship, or establish a hereditary monarchy. But his style did help accelerate the collapse of institutional authority, such as that once held by the media. Although many of his more dramatic promises have been unrealized (stymied by a variety of forces), the symbology of authority has remained key for gaining and wielding legitimacy.

The twilight of liberalism

A numinous connection has developed between an electorate that confers sovereignty upon its chosen figure and the figure who exercises it. The acoustic and visual symbols this connection generates are all the more potent because, at this point in the 21st century, as Mary Harrington has argued, a culture of mass literacy has vanished. This culture was essential to transmit the symbols associated with the print ideals of liberalism (for instance, the importance placed on the freedom of the press, or on discourse itself). As print culture goes, so go the symbols of liberalism. Other symbols step into their place.

Trump’s more subtle critics, who are troubled by the twilight of liberalism, noticed this transformation. They sense something has changed and single out Trump as the chief villain. But wielding the symbols of personal authority is one area in which Trump has long ceased to be exceptional. Even those who are very far from Trump ideologically and politically still inhabit his symbolic universe, in which personal authority, hierarchy, and one’s capacity to reshape political life are of critical importance.

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Emmanuel Macron’s predecessors, fearing being labeled authoritarians by the May ’68 generation, adopted a deliberately understated, egalitarian style. Macron shocked the French political system by embracing the persona of “Jupiter.” He seized the opportunity that Trump’s descent down the escalator made possible.

Pope Francis began his papacy in a conversational, freewheeling style, akin to a Clintonian or Blairite doing one’s best to manage the media narrative. But after the first few years, he also imitated Trump as his supporters embraced the theology of an imperial papacy.

Joe Biden likewise leaned into a “Dark Brandon” iconography of authority to create the impression that he was in charge, the simulacrum of a functioning presidency.

Politicians who can’t successfully embody the symbolism of authority, such as Biden, or those who shy away from it, such as Justin Trudeau, end up as failures. Trudeau launched his political career by an act of physical prowess, beating up a Conservative Party senator who was too lazy to train for a boxing match. It was a crude but effective way of legitimating Trudeau’s claim to lead the Liberal Party and Canada.

Even in an extremely progressive country, primal assertions of authority win admiration. But Trudeau forgot the underlying lesson. In office, he preferred the symbolism of colorful socks, and his unpopularity forced him to resign in ignominy. Meanwhile, Trudeau’s successor, who invokes the physical, masculine iconography of hockey fights to win votes, has returned to more visceral politics. The liberal norms of national civility go nowhere; it’s the brash Trumpian traits that are deployed to gain victory.

Slashing the straitjacket

The resurgence of authority is why there’s no chance of reverting to globalized, impersonal power — at least how the pre-2015 world conceived it. As candidates compete for personal authority, those vying for power repudiate the notion that economic, social, and legal networks should constrain human agents. The capacity to take back control over these networks is what matters. This helps us understand the deeper unity behind Trump’s signature policies.

All the major themes that Trump hit on when he descended the escalator — an end to mass immigration, free trade, and regime-change missions abroad — were on one level anti-globalization topics: They slashed away at the golden straitjacket.

Anti-globalization themes are now so mainstream that even Keir Starmer imitates Trump’s symbology by talking tough on border control. On one level, it’s a policy victory. But the success is more profound than that. To effect that agenda demands the reassertion of the personal, political will to effect social and political change. Faced with the diminishing returns of the old regime, that’s what more and more people are looking for.

In our new world, leaders rise and fall by how well they can speak the language of authority. Whatever the full implications of this paradigm shift may be, the longing for sovereigns shows no signs of letting up.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally as “A New Birth of Authority” at the American Mind.

FBI director Kash Patel to Canada: Control your border

It's long been an open secret in Canadian law enforcement circles: Chinese Triads have been moving people, weapons, and drugs over the the border and into the United States with impunity for decades.

And yet the government in Ottawa has largely failed to act on repeated warnings by a number of Canadian security officials over the years.

'He has stopped all the border crossings. So where's all the fentanyl coming from still? Where's the trafficking coming from still?'

President Donald Trump has brought renewed attention to lax border security, using tariffs as a stick to prompt action.

Now Trump-appointed FBI Director Kash Patel is amplifying his boss' message: Forget Mexico. America's most pressing border security concern is to the north.

'Step up'

During an interview with Fox News host Maria Bartrimono last weekend, Patel brushed aside concerns about Trump's "51st state" rhetoric and urged Canada to “step up” and take responsibility for its border security.

Of the 300 known or suspected terrorists to illegally enter the U.S. in 2024, 85% came via Canada, Patel claimed.

Noting that Trump has effectively "sealed" the Mexican border, the FBI boss also contended that Canada must be the source of the fentanyl that continues to be smuggled into the U.S.

“In the first two, three months that we have been in the seat under Donald Trump's administration, he has sealed the border. He has stopped border crossings. So where's all the fentanyl coming from still? Where's the trafficking coming from still?” Patel asked rhetorically.

He quickly supplied the answer: “The northern border.”

Booming business

Patel identified two distinct roles that Canada plays in the international drug trade: a destination for smuggled fentanyl ingredients and a haven for illegal labs transforming those ingredients into fentanyl.

“Our adversaries have partnered up with the [Chinese Communist Party] and others — Russia, Iran — on a variety of different criminal enterprises, and they're going and they're sailing around to Vancouver and coming in by air."

Patel’s remarks have been largely confirmed by Canadian investigative journalist Sam Cooper, who has done extensive reporting on how fentanyl precursors arrive from China at the Vancouver port, where the shipments are undetected. The precursors are then moved to drug production plants in the interior of British Columbia, where the fentanyl is produced.

Under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the Canadian government showed little interest in interrupting his process until last December, when tariff pressure from Trump helped persuade Trudeau to announce a $900 million border security plan.

Cozy with China

Trudeau successor Mark Carney has has talked about bolstering border security but has yet to allocate a penny more. There is no budget expected from his government until sometime in the fall.

Carney's close ties with China may complicate any attempts to crack down on that country's alleged infiltration of Canadian ports.

As I wrote here last month, Carney has advocated for replacing the U.S. dollar with the Chinese yuan as the global currency. While serving in Beijing as the special economic adviser to then-Prime Minister Trudeau, Carney also secured a $276 million (CDN) loan from the Chinese central bank in October 2024 for Brookfield Asset Management, a company he chaired at the time.

The Apprentice: Carney plays nice during first White House visit

It was another surreal moment in the bizarre relationship between President Donald Trump and new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, staunch political opponents who nonetheless seem to have a genuine affection for each other — at least when face to face.

Carney was in Washington, D.C., Tuesday to meet with the president in his first foreign trip as an elected prime minister. Given that Carney won Canada's April 28 federal election largely by vowing to stand up to Trump, a little tension might have been expected at the White House news conference.

Carney insisted that Trump must stop alluding to Canada as the 51st state if negotiations are to proceed unimpeded.

Instead, Trump called Carney “a talented person." Carney described Trump as “a transformational president.”

No hard feelings

For his part, Trump seems to have been sincere — after all, the president endorsed Carney on three different occasions and was happy to take credit for his victory in typical Trumpian fashion.

Carney's words, however, were a far cry from the tough rhetoric he used while propelling his Liberal Party to a fourth straight term in power. On the campaign trail, Carney vowed to fight Trump and his tariffs every chance he got — tough talk that had no small part in securing his victory.

Clearly any tariff talk was going to go on behind closed doors — at least Trump certainly wasn't giving anything away during the two leaders' first official appearance together.

Each man was surrounded by close advisers. Trump had Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, while Carney looked to Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly, Public Safety Minister David McGuinty, and International Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc.

No business

For most of the conversation with the anxious media, Trump behaved as if Carney weren’t even sitting beside him, almost never referencing his presence or even why he was in Washington.

Carney sat in perfect subservience to the master.

Trump held forth in his usual manner, talking about any issue that came to mind except tariffs. In fact, he dismissed the significance of the neighboring countries' economic relationship: “We don’t do much business with Canada from our standpoint. They do a lot of business with us. We’re at like 4%.”

Carney was quick to point out how ridiculous this statement was — that Canada is in fact “the largest client of the United States." It was probably the clearest moment of truth the banker turned politician has had since he decided to run for the leadership of the Liberal Party.

'Maybe even greater than mine'

Trump introduced Carney like an old friend and valued colleague:

It's a great honor to have Prime Minister Mark Carney with us. As you know, just a few days ago, he won a very big election in Canada, and I think I was probably the greatest thing that happened to him, but I can't take a vote. They were — his party was losing by a lot, and he ended up winning. So I really want to congratulate him.

Was one of the — probably one of the greatest comebacks in the history of politics, maybe even greater than mine. But I want to just congratulate you. Was a great election. Actually, we were watching it with interest, and I think Canada chose a very talented person, a very good person, because we spoke before the election quite a few times, and it's an honor to have you at the White House and the Oval Office.

That was news! They spoke several times during the election? Carney had only mentioned one conversation.

A 'transformational' president

Carney returned the collegiality, saying, “Thank you for your hospitality and, above all, for your leadership. You're a transformational president.”

The prime minister explained that Trump was so transformational because of his “focus on the economy, with a relentless focus on the American worker, securing your borders, ending the scourge of fentanyl and other opioids, and in securing the world.”

Carney, in a jaw-dropping sequence, explained that he too was fighting for exactly the same things and that he would

transform Canada with a similar focus on the economy, securing our borders, again, on fentanyl, much greater focus on defense and security, securing the Arctic and developing the Arctic. And you know, the history of Canada and the U.S. is that we're stronger when we work together. And there's many opportunities to work together.

And I look forward to, you know, addressing some of those issues that we have, but also finding those areas of mutual cooperation so we can go forward.

Trump nodded and said, “That's great. Very nice. Thank you very much. Very nice statement.”

Fighting words

There was one moment of defiance from Carney as Trump again raised the specter of Canada becoming part of the United States. “Respectfully, Canadians’ view on this is not going to change, on the 51st state," the prime minister said.

Trump genially agreed to disagree, insisting that his relationship with Carney was “very friendly,” even as he reiterated his position that the U.S. did not want to buy any Canadian cars or steel.

Nor did Trump budge on the existing tariffs on cars and steel. When a reporter asked if there was anything Canada could do to roll the tariffs back, the president replied with a flat "no."

No love lost

Trump quickly moved the conversation to a happier subject: how much he loathed former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his deputy, former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.

I won't say this about Mark, but I didn't like his predecessor. I didn't like a person that worked for him. She was terrible. Actually, she was a terrible person, and she really hurt that deal very badly, because she tried to take advantage of the deal, and she didn't get away with it. …

We had a bad relationship having to do with the fact that we disagreed with the way they viewed the deal, and we ended it. You know, we ended that — that relationship. Pretty much the USMCA is great for all countries. It's good for all countries. We do have a negotiation coming up over the next year or so to adjust it or terminate it.

Carney managed to get a word in on the USMCA free trade deal between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, calling the defunct treaty “a basis for a broader negotiation. Some things about it are going to have to change. And part of the way you've conducted these tariffs has taken advantage of existing aspects of USMCA, so it's going to have to change. There's other elements that have come, and that's part of what we're going to discuss during the campaign.”

Positive post-mortem

The two leaders spent another few hours in private meetings before Carney emerged at the Canadian embassy in Washington to explain what progress had been made.

"I conveyed to the president today what our countries have long proven to be true: that Canada and the United States are stronger when we work together," said Carney.

"Really today marked the end of the beginning, of a process of the United States and Canada redefining that relationship of working together. The question is, how we will cooperate in the future. How we can build an economic and security relationship built on mutual respect and common interests, that delivers transformational benefits to our economies."

Carney insisted that Trump must stop alluding to Canada as the 51st state if negotiations are to proceed unimpeded.

"I've been careful always to distinguish between wish and reality. I was clear there in the Oval Office, as I've been clear throughout on behalf of Canadians, saying this is never going to happen. Canada is not for sale; it never will be for sale," said Carney.

Rule by the people? Not anymore in the Western world

On Friday, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency officially labeled Alternative for Germany — the country’s most popular conservative party — as a “right-wing extremist” organization. The nationalist party surged to second place in February’s federal election, winning 20.8% of the vote. This new designation grants the ruling government expanded powers to surveil Alternative for Germany leaders and supporters and sets the stage for an outright ban.

Germany has now joined a growing list of Western governments that delay elections, disqualify candidates, and ban opposition parties — all in the name of defending democracy.

Democracy has become a marketing slogan — useful for justifying war and globalist expansion, but disposable when it interferes with ruling-class priorities.

To call Germany’s relationship with authoritarianism “complicated” understates the case. The country’s historical memory fixates on Nazism as the ultimate expression of right-wing extremism and mass atrocity. But that singular focus conveniently ignores the fact that the Soviet Union, which helped defeat the Third Reich, imposed its own brutal regime across East Germany until the Berlin Wall fell.

Modern Germany has seen tyranny from both the far right and the far left. Yet its national identity now orbits entirely around a rejection of right-wing politics. Anti-fascism has become something like a state religion. But when a country builds its identity on shame and self-repudiation, it risks cultural collapse. We’ve seen the same pathology infect America, where elite institutions push a national narrative defined entirely by slavery and racial guilt.

Every nation has dark chapters. A mature society learns from them. It doesn’t define itself by them forever.

While German history explains some of its deep aversion to nationalism, the trend of suppressing populist movements in the name of democracy has spread far beyond Berlin.

Brazil’s Supreme Court banned former President Jair Bolsonaro from seeking office until 2030. Romania’s Constitutional Court voided its 2024 election, citing supposed Russian influence in the rise of populist candidate Călin Georgescu. And in the United States, courts came dangerously close to removing Donald Trump from the ballot — while the president now fights legal battles over whether he can exercise executive power at all under Article II of the Constitution.

This isn’t democracy defending itself. It’s ruling elites trying to outlaw their opposition.

Western elites justify their dominance by invoking democracy and individual liberty. That wasn’t always the case. The West once called itself Christendom — a civilizational identity grounded in faith, tradition, and truth. But it abandoned that foundation in favor of secular platitudes.

The United States has waged entire wars in the name of exporting democracy to places like Iraq and Afghanistan — nations that never wanted it and were never going to keep it. These projects were doomed from the start. Yet at least they wrapped American power in the language of benevolence.

Today, even that fig leaf has disappeared.

The modern West treats democracy as a branding exercise, not a principle. Leaders like Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau, and Keir Starmer love lecturing the world about “liberal norms,” even as they jail political dissidents, censor speech, and turn domestic intelligence services against their own citizens. They condemn Vladimir Putin’s authoritarianism while staying silent as NATO allies crush dissent at home.

Democracy has become a marketing slogan — useful for justifying war and globalist expansion, but disposable when it interferes with ruling-class priorities.

Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio both slammed the German government for labeling Alternative for Germany as extremist. On social media, Rubio went further, blaming Germany’s open-border policies for the Alternative for Germany rise and calling the state’s surveillance powers tyranny in disguise.

Germany’s Foreign Office issued a formal reply, insisting the decision stemmed from an “independent” and “thorough” investigation.

The claim is absurd on its face.

No government can “independently” investigate and condemn its most prominent political opposition — especially not when the accusation is “extremism,” a term that now means little more than holding views the ruling class finds inconvenient.

I’ve made no secret of my dislike of modern mass democracy. But the original concept, at least, had merit. Democracy once meant rule by the demos — the people of a particular nation, rooted in shared history, culture, and civic identity. Its legitimacy came not from procedure or process but from the bonds between citizens and their country.

Today’s ruling class has twisted that definition beyond recognition. As I’ve written before, globalist elites now use the word “democracy” to describe a system governed by unaccountable institutions they alone control. Populism, they say, is dangerous. Democracy, they insist, must be preserved. But in practice, they oppose the popular will and protect only the process they’ve captured.

Elections have become sacraments — rituals that legitimize the rule of bureaucracies, not expressions of the people’s will. The process is sacred, not the outcome. That’s why Western politicians now speak of “our sacred democracy,” which must be defended not from tyranny, but from actual democratic movements.

Western leaders still try to justify their global power by invoking freedom and liberty. But their credibility has collapsed. It’s farcical to hear men like Justin Trudeau or Keir Starmer preach about “shared Western values” while jailing political opponents and silencing dissent at home.

The moral authority of liberal democracy is crumbling. And the cause isn’t Putin or China. It’s Western leaders who’ve gutted the electoral process and replaced it with rule by managerial elites.

The Trump administration should continue to expose this hypocrisy. But it also must act. That means offering political asylum to dissidents facing persecution in places like Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Americans rightly recoil at repression in Russia. They should feel the same revulsion when it comes from our “allies” in Berlin, Ottawa, or London.

Justin Trudeau's own brother says Canada is RUINED

Justin Trudeau’s lineage has long been a topic of debate, as many conspiracy theories have swirled around who his father really is — but who his brother is is not up for debate and neither are his brother’s feelings on Trudeau himself.

His brother, Kyle Kemper, sat down with Alex Stein on “Prime Time with Alex Stein” this January to tell him how he really feels about the former prime minister of Canada.

“In your opinion, did your brother do permanent damage to Canada? Did he really make it a worse place?” Stein asked Kemper.

“Oh, I think so,” Kemper replied. “He was the spokesperson, leading the script, being the lead actor in the, you know, multi-trillion dollars of wealth transfer from sovereign Canadians into moving up the chain.”

“Right at the end of the trucker thing, too, that’s when all of a sudden the Ukraine narrative popped in,” Kemper continued, noting that right after Trudeau froze bank accounts, suspended drivers' licenses, and even threw some truckers in jail — it was, “Ukraine, we love you.”

“Everybody put a Ukraine flag in your bio, because this is serious. We will stand with you forever,” he mocked.

However, at the time of the interview, right-wing Pierre Poilievre had thrown his hat in the ring to take Trudeau’s spot as prime minister of Canada — but that spot has now been filled by Mark Carney.

But Kemper never had much hope for the country anyway.

“The way that the politics works, it’s literally just, you say ‘up,’ I say ‘down,’ game. It’s literally nonstop in the House of Commons,” Kemper tells Stein. “Nobody answers questions. It is absurd. It is an affront to the intelligence of all Canadians. It is no longer truly representative of it.”

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No choice for Canadian voters when it comes to sending billions to Ukraine

Say what you will about Donald Trump — he knows how to drum up publicity. He's even managed to interest Americans in Canada’s upcoming federal election, now less than a week away.

The president's influence on the contest was all but guaranteed last month, when he made good on his threats to levy a 25% tariff on Canadian steel and aluminum — with further duties on lumber and pharmaceuticals a possibility.

Despite his ostensible Canada-first outlook, Pierre Poilievre has been in lockstep with the Liberal government policy on Ukraine for over three years.

Prior to this movie, Pierre Poilievre's Conservative Party was strongly favored to unseat the reigning Liberal Party, led by Justin Trudeau successor Mark Carney.

Not so today.

Agreeing to agree

The Liberals have benefited from a surge of Canadian antipathy toward Trump, to the extent that they now seem to be running more against the American president than the opposition Conservative Party — something that the American media has not failed to notice. For his part, Trump has actually endorsed Carney.

With the April 28 election looming, what has become a two-party race between Liberals and Conservatives remains close.

While the vote may serve as a referendum on Trump's economic policy, another issue has proven depressingly uncontroversial: support for Ukraine. For all of their differences, Canada's four major political parties all share a turgid and demented determination to continue to pour billions of dollars into the black hole of Kyiv.

This despite Trump’s repeated pledge to end the Russia-Ukraine war. While saying he could do it in a mere 24 hours may have been typical Trumpian hyperbole, it's clear that securing peace remains a priority for the president.

Biden's folly

One need only look at what happened under the previous administration to understand why. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was a regular visitor to the Biden White House, always clad in his odd mixture of combat gear and activewear — and never leaving empty handed.

The engagement of U.S. and NATO military personnel alongside Ukrainian soldiers, as well as the use of American and British missiles to strike the Russian heartland, brought America perilously close to nuclear war with Russia. Seeing the horrible potential for a third world war, both Trump and then-Senator JD Vance urged caution and encouraged peace.

Incredibly, Canada seems not to have taken the hint.

Alone and outgunned

Even as Trump slowly but surely extricates the U.S. from supporting Ukraine and distances itself from NATO members who delusionally believe they can either take on Russia in a conventional war or somehow survive a nuclear one, Canadian political leaders talk about going it alone against Russia without America.

This is beyond ludicrous. Canada does not have a single operational tank left after giving all of its working Leopard models to Ukraine. It has yet to replenished the vast quantities of armaments it has given Ukraine; in fact, it is unable to do so. The U.K.’s military is also a shell of what it was, say, in 1982, when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher went to war over the Falkland Islands.

Besides, the war is effectively over. Ukraine cannot continue to furnish more troops for the battlefield even if it continues to abduct recruits from the streets and bars. Anyone who advocates the continuation of the war is, knowingly or not, arguing for the killing of an entire generation of Ukrainians. It is a consummation that might have already occurred.

Not up for debate?

Canadians should demand to know why all four party leaders at the English-language leaders’ debate in Montreal last Thursday stood foursquare behind that policy.

Yes, such painful pandering should be expected from Carney, as well as Bloc Quebecois (separatist) chief Yves-Francois Blanchet and New Democratic Party boss Jagmeet Singh. But Poilievre?

Despite his ostensible Canada-first outlook, the politician has been in lockstep with the Liberal government policy on Ukraine for over three years.

When asked how a Conservative government would respond to Zelenskyy’s continued demands for money and armaments, Poilievre responded, “I believe we should continue to support Ukraine. Our party supported donating missiles that the Canadian military was decommissioning. We supported funds and other armaments to back the Ukrainians in the defense of their sovereignty.”

Knowing full well how unpopular this view is with his conservative base, Poilievre quickly tried to change the subject, emphasizing the need “to rebuild our own Canadian military, because the Russians want to make incursions into our waters."

"We'll be buying four massive Arctic ice breakers," Poilievre continued. "I'll be opening the first Arctic base since the Cold War in Canada, CFB, Iqaluit.”

Fleshing it out

That wasn’t good enough for the debate moderator, who pressed Poilievre to “put a little more flesh on the bone of what you think Canada could do for Ukraine.” His response:

My answer is that we should continue to support Ukraine. We don't need to follow the Americans in everything they do when they're wrong, then we will stand on our own and with other allies and with respect to Ukraine, that includes support with intelligence equipment, armaments, but it also includes defunding Putin. Right now, Vladimir Putin has a monopoly on the European energy market because, frankly, the liberals blocked exports of Canadian natural gas off the Atlantic coast. They blocked multiple projects. I would rapidly approve those projects on national security grounds, so that we can, we can actually ship Canadian natural gas over to Europe, break European dependence on Putin, defund the war, and turn dollars for dictators back into paychecks for our people.

Nice try, but it still adds up to flaky policy based on a perceived need to appease the Ukrainian-Canadian vote that is preponderant in many key constituencies across Canada — a vote that generally goes to the Liberals.

Poilievre's words may also alienate Conservatives to the point that they decide not to vote at all — or to give their vote to the one Canadian party that opposes aid to Ukraine: Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada.

Maxime effort

People's Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier campaigns in Edmonton April 18. NurPhoto/Getty Images

A libertarian alternative that has fielded candidates in every Canadian riding and could actually capture one or two this election, the PPC lacked the 5% share of national voters necessary to participate in the debate.

Nevertheless, Bernier continues to speak for all Canadians fed up with their country's involvement in this endless and expensive quagmire.

As he told Align:

The war in Ukraine is not a conflict between good and evil, or autocracy versus democracy. It’s a longstanding conflict over border territories between these two countries that has been amplified and turned into a proxy war by NATO and the imperialist warmongers in Washington and other western capitals.

It doesn’t concern Canada and we should have nothing to do with it. Russia is not our enemy. The only reason Canada is so involved is that the establishment parties are pandering to Canadians of Ukrainian descent.

It's a message that deserves a wider hearing and could resonate with Canadians fed up with the endless and expensive quagmire.