Canada’s Loss Is Florida’s Loss Too | Opinion

“I didn’t hear much French on Hollywood Beach this March,” claimed the family friend who looks after our place, himself a long ago transplant from Montreal.

Back in 1979, my parents sold a cottage in Ontario and used the proceeds to buy a second home in Hallandale Beach. Like many Canadians, they came for the weather, but over more than 45 years, it became a special place for three generations of our family.

Every December and March, you could always spot the throngs of Canadians, most of them from Toronto or Montreal, on the beaches of South Florida: They’d be the ones wearing shorts and T-shirts when it was 65 degrees and cloudy.

We went to Jaxson’s for ice cream, discovered the strange sport of Jai-Alai, and became Dolphins fans (the Panthers were a bridge too far). We made friends with native Floridians and Americans fleeing the cruel winters of the Northeast and Midwest.

It seems fitting, then, that the betrayal would come from a thrice-married man in Palm Beach — a guy who treats his closest allies like his wives and the world’s despots like his mistresses.

Donald Trump once infamously bragged about a courtship ritual that included grabbing women by the genitals. After all we’ve been through together, you’d think he’d offer to buy Canada a drink first.

Americans have been largely preoccupied with the impact of Trump’s whipsaw tariffs on their own economy. But for Canadians, the impact is more akin to an economic tsunami and a national sovereignty crisis.

Ironically, Trump’s tariff and annexation threats are credited for swinging last week’s federal election for Mark Carney, the Harvard- and Oxford-educated former Goldman Sachs banker, governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England, ardent environmentalist and former World Economic Forum trustee, who is the poster child for everything the MAGA movement loathes.

In the never-satisfied province of Quebec, which was beginning to talk about another sovereignty referendum, the electorate decided to put the toys back in the crib and get behind Carney on the assumption that there may be no Canada left to leave once Trump is done with us.

Americans might be tempted to eye-roll over Trump Derangement Syndrome, Canadian edition. But the economic risks are real. The U.S. is Canada’s largest trading partner, representing 97% of Canada’s oil exports, 100% of its natural gas, and roughly 75% of the country’s overall exports.

Trump likes to complain that other countries rip Americans off, but the reality is that Canada’s inability to get its two largest exports to other markets has been a bonanza for American refiners and consumers.

Approximately 24% of the crude oil refined in the U.S. and over 60% of all oil imports come from Canada, not because Americans want to do Canadians a solid, but simply because Canada’s inability to build pipelines has forced it to sell oil to its southern neighbor at a substantial discount.

After Russia invaded Ukraine, the leaders of Japan, Germany and Greece all came begging Canada for a stable supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Then-prime minister Justin Trudeau sent them packing, claiming there was “no business case” for LNG in Canada.

The solution? Canada would continue to send its natural gas to its American friends, who would  liquefy it, take the profits for that added value, and send it to our allies abroad.

For a nation that was bilking its best friend and neighbor, Canada wasn’t doing a very good job of it: Between 2014 and 2024, Canada’s real gross domestic product per capita grew a paltry 0.5%, while that of the U.S. grew 20.7%, a state of affairs that left the average Ontarian with an income on par with that of an Alabaman.

More troubling was being lumped in with Trump’s growing list of deadbeats, criminals and other miscreants.

Handguns are all but impossible to obtain legally in Canada, but we tolerate a deluge of weapons from our southern neighbor. In Toronto an estimated 80-90% of illegal handguns originate in the U.S.

Nevertheless, Canadians were told, without evidence, that their country would be subject to tariffs because of the stream of deadly fentanyl that enters the U.S. from China via Mexico, and the caravans of illegal immigrants at the southern border.

If Canadians thought they enjoyed a special relationship with the U.S., being lumped in the same basket as the narco-terrorists and human traffickers of Sinaloa ought to have disabused them of that notion.

As with all broken relationships, something will be lost, possibly forever. Canadians, whom Trudeau once described as living in a “postnational state,” have suddenly found their patriotism. For a time, “The Star Spangled Banner” was being booed at NHL games.

Our two nations enjoy the world’s longest undefended border, largest trading partnership, and nearly a century of military cooperation, from the beaches of D-Day to the fight against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Floridians, and indeed all Americans, will have to decide whether it’s worth throwing all that away for the juvenile pleasure of a mean-spirited tweet.

Ian Cooper is a Toronto-based lawyer.