Nelson: Make Canada great again? No chance​on February 13, 2025 at 1:00 pm

Canada is determined to boost productivity, build much-needed infrastructure and cultivate new markets, instead of being so reliant upon the United States.

Don’t hold your breath: we won’t do any of it.

Our country is mirroring those who swear they’ll lose weight, drink less and start exercising more, beginning on New Year’s Day. But when February rolls around, the couch inevitably embraces them as some long-lost friend.

The impetus for today’s economic “get fit” crusade is, of course, U.S. President Donald Trump, who insults us by imagining we’d ever want to become Americans, while threatening to turn Canada into a failed state by destroying our economy through heavy tariffs on U.S.-bound exports.

This has led to the remarkable spectacle of normally polite Canadians booing the Star Spangled Banner before sports games. Meanwhile, U.S. vacations are being cancelled and American beer is put on a do-not-buy list. (Why anyone would drink Budweiser in the first place?)

There is a sense of righteous anger across our land. But if anyone believes this is enough to change our collective attitude toward large-scale industrial development, they’ve been partaking of our famously legal national product. No, it isn’t maple syrup.

Here in Alberta, we’re gung-ho that the rest of Canada finally gets what we’ve said for years: blocking oil pipelines to the east and west coasts and making the U.S. the only market for this country’s most valuable product is ludicrous. Similar frustrations arise over huge hurdles in constructing liquid natural gas terminals in B.C., or mining copper, lithium, gold, nickel and a host of other natural resources, everywhere.

Suddenly, everyone seems to see the light, thanks to Trump’s annoying bluster. Even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who once told Germany and Japan there was simply no business case for them importing Canadian energy, appears to have had a rethink.

Don’t be fooled. Activist Indigenous groups, steadfast global-warming zealots and valiant warriors battling toxic masculinity have indeed gone a tad quiet. This doesn’t mean they’ve given up their various crusades. They’re simply waiting in the weeds, ready to re-emerge as vitriolic as ever, once the current enthusiasm for building stuff starts to ebb.

Maybe, in our recent enthusiasm to engage in some version of making Canada great again, we’ve forgotten what’s in store for any company trying to build a pipeline to any coast. Here’s a reminder, courtesy of the Secwepemc Women’s Warrior Society, which opposed the Kinder Morgan “man camps” along the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.