Our fight with Donald Trump is a riveting spectacle — and a call to arms

You might even call it entertaining — unless you’re one of the people or businesses in need of the billions of dollars of help that governments are pouring out to help stem the damage that Trump’s tariff war is wreaking on the nation.

Riveting, entertaining or scary, this crisis — as a couple of Carney’s ministers admitted on Tuesday it is — requires all the attention it’s getting. Politicians at all levels have been candid that, now that it’s Canada versus Trump, citizens are being called to arms.

The citizen mobilization may be the biggest ask Canadian governments have made of the population since the days of the pandemic. It is striking to hear politicians peppering their public appearances with outright requests for Canadians to keep hanging in for what could be a long battle.

Carney himself said on Monday that we might have to wait until “after the fever breaks” — and by that, he’s hinted strongly, he means the end of Trump’s presidency. Ford, at his remarkable news conference on Monday, floated the same timeline: “We’ll wait it out for two years, even if he lasts two years.”

At a Tuesday news conference to announce measures to fight the trade war, Industry Minister Melanie Joly said some loan repayment schedules have been stretched to last longer than Trump will be in the White House.

Joly and other ministers were not shy at that news conference about just how much this tumultuous new chapter in Canada-U.S. relations was going to require citizens at the grassroots to do their part.

“For many of you watching us right now, you may ask yourself, ‘What can I do? What can I do to help?,’” Joly said. “This morning, I had the chance to talk with many associations of retailers, to really have them on board, to make sure that at your grocers, at your local shop, that you understand what are the Canadian products, and I have their support to make sure that’s the case. And we will push them to make sure that that’s the case, because that’s really how you can help.”

Finance Minister François Philippe Champagne pointedly noted, “Our greatest power is our own purchasing power.”

Jobs and Families Minister Patty Hajdu came at it another way, urging Canadians not to be daunted by the magnitude of this dispute or its consequences.

“All of that worry and anxiety makes it really difficult to plan for the future. It has an effect of sort of freezing people in place,” she said. “That is the challenge: it can freeze our economy, it can freeze the ambition of our businesses, and it can freeze the autonomy of our individual Canadians, and that’s why we’re here today.”

During the pandemic, a unit within the Privy Council Office actively studied ways to motivate citizens for a greater cause. Judging from the website, the unit is still up and running, but not in the realm of the Canada-U.S. standoff — at least not yet. But clearly members of Carney’s government are grappling with how to keep citizens engaged in this battle.

That’s where Ford may come in. With his tirade against Trump on Monday, saying the president can “kiss my ass” and hurling personal insults, Ford could be seen as a motivator. Calling Trump a “loser” not only insulted the president, but made him smaller.

The reaction it provoked in the president — if we can assume that Trump’s proposal to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America” was a reaction — only leaves Canadians unable to avert their eyes.

My colleague Rob Ferguson asked Ford at that news conference whether Carney had advised the premier to tone down his attacks on Trump. No, Ford replied, hinting with a smile that the prime minister might even be enjoying seeing the premier reprise his bad-cop role at this juncture of the long-running frustration.

Carney may also see it as useful amid the current collapse of talks and resulting tariff war. Someone has to vent what many Canadians may be thinking or saying around their dinner tables. Someone has to keep reminding people that they need to fight Trump in their own way.

Carney and his ministers are all using different appeals to the same cause. Calling Canadians to arms may not get Trump back to the bargaining table, but it keeps citizens active and interested.

In that same spirit, Carney may want to thank Trump for his explosion of anti-Canada rants on Truth Social in the past couple of days. Every post reminds Canadians of why this country walked away from the talks.