America’s Crazy Uncle Is Screaming Again. Pass the Potatoes.

At some point, Canada has to learn the difference between Donald Trump saying something outrageous and Donald Trump doing something that actually requires a response.

This morning it’s Lake Ontario. Apparently he’s considering calling it “Lake America.” Before that it was the 51st state. Before that our Prime Minister was a “Governor.” We’ve been a fentanyl problem, a border problem, a dairy problem, a trade-deficit problem, an auto problem, a security problem and, increasingly, just a fucking problem problem.

Meanwhile, tariffs are announced, delayed, changed, threatened, imposed and reconsidered. Deadlines move. Negotiating positions change. Agreements that appear close suddenly aren’t. Whatever you think of Donald Trump personally, this is not a stable or predictable way to manage the relationship between two countries whose economies are deeply intertwined.

And increasingly I find myself thinking about the crazy uncle at Thanksgiving.

Every family movie has one. Uncle Larry is at the end of the table yelling that the Germans are coming. Half the family argues with him. Someone gets offended. Someone leaves the table. Grandma keeps eating her potatoes because she’s heard this seventeen times before.

Eventually the family learns something: you don’t have to jump every time Uncle Larry starts yelling.

That doesn’t mean you ignore him when he sets the curtains on fire.

A 50% tariff? The curtains are on fire.

Demands affecting Canada’s ability to make its own trade agreements? Curtains.

Measures threatening Canadian industries and jobs? Get the extinguisher.

“Lake America”?

It’s Lake Ontario. Anyways…

There’s another line I keep thinking about. It comes from *Justified*: “If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole.”

There’s a geopolitical version of that worth considering.

If Canada is ripping you off, Mexico is ripping you off, Europe is ripping you off, China is ripping you off, your NATO allies are taking advantage of you, your old trade agreements were terrible, and even the replacement trade agreements your own administration negotiated are now terrible, eventually somebody has to ask whether every other country is actually the problem.

And none of this requires pretending we know what is happening medically or cognitively with Donald Trump. I don’t. I’m not his doctor. What I can observe is the behaviour of his administration and the extraordinary unpredictability surrounding its decisions. Canadians are perfectly entitled to call that erratic and unstable without pretending we’re making a medical diagnosis.

The difficult part is that Uncle Larry in this analogy controls the most powerful government in the world.

So Canada cannot simply laugh this off. When American rhetoric becomes American policy, there are consequences for Canadian workers, businesses and families. We have to negotiate with the President who exists, not the President we wish existed.

But this is also the person some people believe Canada can simply sit down with, hammer out a long-term agreement and finally put all of this behind us.

Maybe we can. I hope we can.

There are people watching Washington who believe another deal could come together quickly. Anthony Scaramucci recently suggested we could be looking at a deal within a couple of weeks. Maybe he’s right. The negotiations clearly got close enough that Trump himself announced there was a deal before the whole thing fell apart.

But Canada also has to accept the possibility that waiting this administration out is one of the options on the table.

Not the first option. Not the only option. And certainly not a painless option.

Donald Trump is the President of the United States, and we have to deal with the government Americans elected. We should keep talking. Keep negotiating. Look for areas where both countries can win. If a good and durable agreement becomes available, sign it.

But we cannot convince ourselves that we need a deal so desperately, and so quickly, that Washington knows we’ll eventually accept whatever is put in front of us. The ability to walk away — and stay away for a while — is part of having leverage too.

Because what exactly are we buying if we make permanent Canadian concessions for an agreement that can change the next time somebody in Washington gets angry?

That’s where the Uncle Larry analogy becomes a little more useful.

Americans aren’t Uncle Larry.

They’re our cousins.

They came over for dinner too, and most of them are sitting around the same table watching this spectacle with us. We have families together. We work together. We trade together. We visit each other’s countries. Our economies and communities have been intertwined for generations.

And crazy Uncle Larry is down at the end of the table yelling again.

Sometimes the Canadians and Americans sitting around that table are going to look at each other and go, “Yeah. We know. Just let him be him.”

Because eventually dinner ends.

Presidents leave office.

Canada and the United States don’t get to leave each other.

We’re still going to be neighbours when Donald Trump is gone. We’re still going to trade. We’re still going to share a continent, a border, security interests, families, businesses and probably a few arguments.

So yes, negotiate with the administration that’s there.

But don’t mortgage Canada’s future because we’re afraid of surviving the dinner.

And we also don’t have to allow every provocation to become a three-day Canadian national emergency.

A friend made a good point to me recently about how some Canadian politicians have responded to Trump. Maybe we’ve occasionally talked too much. Maybe every insult didn’t require an answer. Maybe some of our leverage would have been more effective exercised quietly behind closed doors.

Which brings me, ironically, to an American president Donald Trump admires.

Theodore Roosevelt said: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

There’s something in that for Canada.

Speak a little more softly. Stop taking every piece of bait. Build the stick.

Build Canadian industry. Build east-west infrastructure. Diversify our trade. Strengthen our military. Develop our resources. Reduce the vulnerabilities that allow any American administration to threaten enormous damage to our economy. Negotiate seriously. Retaliate when necessary. Walk away when the terms aren’t acceptable.

And when somebody wants to call Lake Ontario “Lake America,” maybe we don’t need a national meltdown.

It’s Lake Ontario.

The tariffs matter. Our sovereignty matters. Our economy matters. The negotiating terms matter.

The daily performance doesn’t always have to.

Canada cannot control whether the American administration behaves predictably.

We can control whether Canada does.