LILLEY: Harper lays out plan for Canada versus Trump

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Stephen Harper is speaking up in defence of Canada once again.

Given the vacuum in leadership at the federal level, given Justin Trudeau’s promise to resign and the ongoing Liberal leadership race, Harper’s intervention is more than welcome.

In a column published across Postmedia, Harper offered some advice to the country in the face of the threats coming out of Washington from the newly installed Trump administration.

First, he cautioned, “we must be calm in the face of Mr. Trump’s threats.”

That’s wise advice – just like a batter in baseball doesn’t swing at every pitch, we shouldn’t react to every threat. Harper’s advice is to not react until a threat becomes real.

That said, he suggested that the country, “should have contingencies for any possible scenario, including the worst.” He said that while retaliation to tariffs if a poor choice, we must retaliate because in a trade war there are no good choices but doing nothing is not an option.

He also warned against Canada offering any unilateral concessions. Doing so would only end up with more demands for concessions and nothing in return.

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Harper took great issue with Trump’s view of the Canada-U.S. relationship, which he said is incredibly beneficial to both countries, but which Trump describes as a drain on the Americans.

“However, given a contrary American perspective, our focus now should not be on pursuing a deeper economic and security partnership. At this stage, whatever comes next from the President, Canada must avoid further dependency on the United States,” Harper wrote.

He said we need to build up our economy for ourselves, build up our defences for ourselves and not rely on the Americans to do it. That while we can be good partners with them, we should not rely on them moving forward.

In truth, I think that is part of the problem the American see in the relationship right now, we rely on them too much and they’d like us to do more. That’s not just Trump, that’s a bi-partisan consensus in Washington. They may express it differently but that’s the reality.

“We can use this moment to make Canada a proud and serious country once again,” Harper said.

He is advocating for building up Canada’s military, which would include our ability to defend the Arctic. He’s also calling for unleashing Canada’s economy, which the Trudeau Liberals have shackled rather than unleashed.

That would require opening up the oil and gas sector, allowing other natural resource sectors to flourish, building pipelines, exploring other export markets. Harper said that one of the things we should avoid is going down the road of Trump style protectionist measures that would make our economy smaller, weaker, even more dependent on the Americans.

He also warned us of following our current path.

“Even worse would be continuing down the path of Davos elitism. Our competitiveness agenda must be focused on opportunities and incomes for working Canadian families, not just the economic one per cent,” Harper said.

That’s not only a shot at the Trudeau government and their disastrous record but also a warning that Mark Carney, the man Harper put in charge of the Bank of Canada, is not the man to help us deal with what lays before us.

“The elitist priorities of Canada’s current leaders in monetary policy, deficits, immigration, climate, and many other areas have already fuelled inflation, doubled housing costs, and created the worst growth in the G7,” Harper said.

He encouraged Canada to embrace the economic benefits we have in natural resources, to embrace the many other trade agreements we have that his government signed onto a decade ago and to turn Canada towards prosperity.

There is only one federal leader who could take harper’s advice, which is sound and actually act on it. That leader isn’t Mark Carney, it’s Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.

blilley@postmedia.com