Talking sense to Trump
It’s hard enough fighting a deadly pandemicthat threatens the health and prosperity of the entire country. It’s even harder to do it with a knife in your back.
The Trump administration’s decision to block shipments of crucial protective equipment heading for Ontario is the equivalent of plunging a knife into someone fighting for their life.
It’s a disgraceful, destructive move. In the short run, it threatens the safety of front-line health-care workers in Ontario. In the longer run, it further undermines the badly frayed relationship between Canada and the United States.
When the chips are down, as a frustrated Premier Doug Ford said over the weekend, “you see who your friends are.” Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe put it more bluntly. Trump’s actions, he said, are “nothing short of a betrayal.”
Federal officials have been working flat out, making the case to anyone in Washington who will listen that blocking shipments of medical supplies to Canada makes no sense.
Medical equipment and health workers move back and forth across the border all the time, they point out. About a thousand nurses living in Windsor, Ont., work over the river in Detroit, which has been hit hard by COVID-19. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau points out that it’s a two-way street that benefits both countries.
The ultimate irony is that the masks and gowns manufactured by 3M in South Dakota and purchased by Ontario are made out of a type of specialized pulp supplied by a Canadian company, Harmac Pacific of Nanaimo, B.C. One small example of how the two economies are inextricably linked.
Ford deserves full credit for pushing back, publicly and forcefully, and warning that without those supplies from south of the border Ontario risks running out of masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) for front-line health workers.
There was evidence on Monday that progress was being made. According to Ford, half a million of the four million masks ordered by Ontario from 3M have been released by U.S. authorities.
If those masks do make it over the border, the province will get a bit of breathing room as the pandemic enters an even more dangerous phase. But at this point it’s far from clear what will become of the rest of the equipment purchased by Ontario, and whether the Trump administration can be persuaded to exempt Canada from its “no export” ruling.
Ottawa needs to keep up the pressure. It managed to beat back a foolish proposal to place American troops near the Canadian border, supposedly to stop people crossing into the U.S. during the pandemic (as if anyone in their right mind would choose to do that).
Now the Trudeau government must push back this latest destructive move from the White House. It mustn’t stop until Washington recognizes that its relationship with Canada should not become another victim of the crisis.
The sad truth is that most countries are turning inward during this pandemic. They’re not just closing borders. They’re cancelling deals to sell crucial equipment, even intercepting shipments en route to other countries. Any pretense of a global fight against COVID-19 is evaporating amidst the scramble to take care of their own and let the devil take the hindmost.
Canada, like other countries, has no choice at this point but to ramp up domestic production of PPEs. If your “friends” turn out to be so untrustworthy in a pinch, you’ve got to rely on your own resources.
But let this be yet another reminder that we should never again be caught so unprepared. If Canada (and other countries) had built up and managed adequate stockpiles of basic medical equipment, as all the experts recommended, they would not now be desperately competing for scarce supplies at exactly the wrong moment.
That, however, is for the future. The priority now must be to talk sense to an administration with a notable lack of just that.