Spoiler alert: none of them. Trump will do whatever he wants regardless of who is the Canadian PM (or the leader of any other country).  And what does “stand up to Trump” really mean? Challenge him with our revenge tariffs that hurt us a lot and hurt him almost not at all? And then borrow billions to subsidize those Canadians that our revenge tariffs have also hurt? How long is that sustainable?

Standing up to Trump is a bogus issue

Standing up to Trump is a bogus issue.  It comes from our understandable anger at Trump bullying us, but still, it is a distraction from the much needed concern about your Canadian future as it is much more affected by your own government.

The central requirement for voters now is self-awareness.  One example is the AA Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

Canadians cannot really change Trump. He is who he is, and neither the Republicans nor the Democrats nor the mainstream media have much influence over him.  

Instead of trying change what we cannot change we need the courage to elect politicians who focus on changing the Canadian policies and laws our past governments have enacted that harm us. Knowing that difference is wisdom.

We need to reduce the self-harm, to increase our real national strengths. Focus on getting our cost of living down and our after tax incomes and employment rates up.

Forget the party platforms and election promises.  They are used to get elected, not to govern.  Past experience with all governments shows us that once any party is in government it will discover that much of its platform is impractical or unpopular, and will largely deal with issues as they arise rather than implementing their platforms.  As for promises, only the convenient ones are kept, and perhaps only in part.

The central problem of Canada today is the self-inflicted increase in our energy costs, which will continue to escalate. Energy powers everything that moves (and keeps us warm in our cold winters). Energy price increases create price increases in everything else.

The consumer carbon tax (now temporarily set to zero, but not repealed) is just one highly visible policy among many low visibility policies that increase energy prices.  All of these need to be reviewed and many of them need to be eliminated.

What are these harmful policies?

1. Excessively rapid and costly pursuit of net zero, which primarily results in inflation and offshoring jobs to countries with higher emissions, creating:

• Growing poverty in Canada
• Higher unemployment
• Higher mortgage costs
• Higher interest rates
• Unaffordable housing
• Unaffordable groceries and growing use of food banks

2. Risk of proposals (now being discussed within the federal government) to tax homeowners annually on the value of their homes. That would both raise a lot of tax revenue and drive down the cost of housing, as many seniors and lower income families would be pressured to sell their homes, thereby increasing supply.

3. Excessive government spending financed by growing national debt and rising debt servicing costs, with harmful effects on our children and grandchildren

4. Creating a political climate that is unfriendly to, and discourages private capital investment in Canada versus the US, causing both a brain drain and a capital drain southward, resulting in:

•  higher taxes,
• lower family income,
• higher unemployment and
• lower quality and availability of healthcare.

5. Legislation like the Impact Assessment Act, that prevents construction of any project of any size that would make energy less expensive

Conclusion

Don’t base your vote on party labels like Liberal and Conservative, or who you think can intimidate Trump.  Think about the personalities of the party leaders and your local candidates: who do you instinctively trust to care enough about you to try to make your life better?