U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s renaming of Lake Ontario is the latest manoeuvre in his ongoing campaign to undermine Canada\u2019s sovereignty, say experts from Brock University\u2019s Department of Political Science.<\/p>\n
In the days following the breakdown of U.S.-Canada trade negotiations, Trump signed an executive order to change the lake\u2019s more-than-400-year-old name to Lake America, despite its longstanding Indigenous roots.<\/p>\n
Professor Blayne Haggart\u00a0says Trump\u2019s latest escalation emphasizes why Prime Minister Mark Carney was right to walk away from the negotiating table.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the face of it, the whole renaming is ridiculous, but it\u2019s what it reflects that\u2019s important: that Donald Trump is not interested in a good trade deal for the United States or Canada. He\u2019s interested in dominating Canada,\u201d Haggart says. \u201cCanadians and Canadian leaders have to come to terms with the fact that this means an agreement we can trust, a binding agreement with the United States, is a literal impossibility for the foreseeable future.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ability for countries to sign agreements with each other is based on trust and their faith that each country involved in the negotiation will keep their word. Trump\u2019s actions, Haggart says, have shown Canada, and other countries around the world, that U.S. leadership can\u2019t currently be trusted.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t sign any agreement with them, because it won\u2019t be worth the paper it\u2019s written on,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd any terms we agree to will, in essence, be terms of surrender or terms of subjugation, because that\u2019s what the United States is interested in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Companies like Google and Apple deciding to implement the name change, even though they\u2019re not legally required to, reflects the ongoing symbiotic relationship between U.S. tech companies and the U.S. government, Haggart says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt should raise questions in Canada about the wisdom of continuing to depend on U.S. digital technologies, in government, business and the post-secondary education sector,\u201d he adds. \u201cThere is no reason to think that this dependence couldn\u2019t be weaponized again against Canada, by U.S. companies afraid of making Trump angry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rather than sway public opinion in the U.S.\u2019s favour, Associate Professor Paul Hamilton\u00a0says the executive order will have the opposite effect.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will galvanize already strong support for the Canadian government\u2019s position among the public,\u201d he says. \u201cIt might also cause serious division between border state Republicans and the rest of the party.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hamilton says while some private and public corporations in Canada have seen their digital maps default to the name change since the executive order, many have pointed out it was not intentional and will be corrected. In the U.S., references to Lake Ontario will be changed at the federal level, but Hamilton says individual states are not obliged to follow the executive order, adding the order has no authority outside of the U.S. and can be reversed by any future President.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis bizarre action serves only to diminish the President\u2019s stature and is strange considering the huge issues facing the U.S. today, such as the economy, Iran and the upcoming elections,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Associate Professor Stefan Dolgert\u00a0sees the renaming as another attempt by Trump to assert dominance over Canada through actions meant to belittle and demean the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wants to smash his imprint on the world,\u201d says Dolgert, likening this behaviour to the kind of fascist politics Trump has been accused of admiring<\/a>\u00a0from leaders like Hitler and Mussolini<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s all in service of the cult of personality.\u201d<\/p>\n Canada has allowed itself to become dependent on the U.S., Dolgert says, recognizing that Carney\u2019s work to pursue trade arrangements with other countries is aimed at reducing that dependence.<\/p>\n \u201cAmerica was a gigantic market that we could sell our goods to, and we made a lot of money from that, but this dependency has become a sword that\u2019s hanging over our head,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n While this is a \u201cfundamental thing that has to change,\u201d it\u2019s equally important for Canada to push back against Trump and stand up to his bullying tactics, he adds.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth Carney and Ontario Premier Doug Ford have been similarly aligned in that strategy. You don\u2019t want to show weakness.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s renaming of Lake Ontario is the latest manoeuvre in his ongoing campaign to undermine Canada\u2019s sovereignty, say experts from Brock University\u2019s Department of Political Science.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":111342,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4767,1,38],"tags":[3445,4104,522,4247,3427],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111338"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111338"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111343,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111338\/revisions\/111343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}