Ever since Justin Trudeau won the election Canada has seen an amazing amount of U.S. exposure compared to the usual disregard for Canada as a whole. I remember when I studied political science as an option at the University of Waterloo, one of the Films we watched and analyzed was entitled “Canada, In bed with an Elephant”. This was part of the Canadian foreign politics section of the course. The U.S is the elephant and the film is a gripping retrospective on United States-Canada relationships as personified by successive presidents and prime ministers. It explains the continuing fight for Canadian independence in North America. At the very beginning of the Film, Brian Mulroney is meeting with Ronald Reagan. The commentary states that in the US, this meeting between two leaders will only make the backpages of some newspapers and maybe get a 20 second spot on the evening news if it isn’t preempted by a natural disaster. Yet in Canada this is the day’s top story. Fast forward to 2015 and According to Daniel Dale the Toronto Star’s Washington correspondent.
“Americans’ first reaction to Canada getting its first new prime minister in 10 years: Googling and ogling shirtless photos of the new prime minister.
On a slow U.S. news day, the victory of a handsome and liberal political heir with a history of sporadic half-nakedness generated a rare wave of media coverage that ranged from sober policy analysis to fawning fluff. Even mainstream outlets could not resist a little beefcake.
Under the headline, “Meet Justin Trudeau: Canada’s Liberal, Boxing, Strip-Teasing New PM,” NBCNews.com posted a photo of Trudeau flexing his biceps. The attached article: a light-on-policy explainer that included four sentences on Trudeau’s biceps tattoo.
E! Online, unburdened by the pretense of providing news, was somehow more breathless: “Canada’s New Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, Is a Smoking-Hot Syrupy Fox.”
Justin Trudeau and Patrick Brazeau in fighting form for charity boxing match (Torstar News Service)
The New York Times put an analytical story at the top of its Tuesday front page and then all day at the top of its website. The Washington Post ran a profile of Trudeau in its own primo web location.
Other outlets focused on the Keystone XL pipeline debate that is the only Canada-U.S. issue on the radar of most Americans. “Canadians oust Keystone champion,” read the headline on Politico. Mother Jones, the left-wing magazine, took the opposite approach, emphasizing Trudeau’s “close ties to Keystone.”
“Justin Trudeau is better on climate than Stephen Harper. But he’s no Barack Obama,” the subhead went.
Secretary of State John Kerry and a spokesman for President Barack Obama, Josh Earnest, said Trudeau’s win would have no impact on Obama’s final decision on Keystone.
Obama planned to phone both Trudeau and Harper, Earnest said, a show of appreciation for Harper’s efforts to strengthen the bilateral relationship. And he said he hoped Trudeau maintains two of Harper’s policies: support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and involvement in the fight against the Islamic State.
On climate change, though, Earnest said, “We believe it’s possible there’s more that Canada can do.”
Two experts on Canada-U.S. relations, consultant Paul Frazer and Scotty Greenwood, a senior adviser to the Canadian American Business Council, said in interviews that it is too soon to tell how the relationship will change.
“Sure, there will be changes. But we’re in a let’s-see-what-happens mode,” said Greenwood.
Former vice-president Al Gore welcomed Trudeau on Twitter, saying he hoped the election “will put Canada back in a leadership position” heading into the fall climate conference in Paris.
The harshest official words for Trudeau were from U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican and a backer of the problem-plagued F-35 fighter jet program the Liberals have vowed to abandon.
“They have the right to do whatever they want to, but it’s stupid,” Hatch told Defense News.
The election was watched closely by U.S. progressives. Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress think tank and a longtime adviser to Hillary Clinton, noted on Twitter that Trudeau, like Obama, had won “after rejecting austerity.”
Neil Sroka, a spokesman for Democracy for America, said his colleagues were “really cheered” by the Canadian result, which he sees as evidence of a global leftward shift also apparent in the Democratic primary.
“Our neighbours to the north: not only did they successfully end the reign of Canada’s equivalent of George W. Bush,” he said, “Trudeau won largely by pulling the Liberal party to the left. And I think that’s a reflection of a dynamic that’s happening all across the world.”
Another happy man: the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “From an American Muslim: God bless Canada. Tonight, you’re giving us hope again in tolerance,” Nihad Awad wrote on Twitter. “Thank you!”
So what does this mean for Canada. IMHO it means Canada is finally getting some long deserved focus in the press. It means people in the US of A are actually talking about Canada in a context other than igloo’s, hockey players and strange accented down easterners saying “aboot” for everyone’s amusement. You may ask yourself, is it good press? is it a good thing that people are posting male model like pictures of Justin lounging in a comfy chair? I believe the answer to this is a resounding yes. What this does is put the focus on Canada. The initial reason may not be the greatest, but it will still bring people to read about our Prime Minister and maybe some of those people will actually take the time to learn more about our tiny (in comparison to the U.S.A) population to the north. Canadian PM’s have a longstanding history of beginning their tenures by making overatures to their American counterparts. It will be interesting to see how this goes with Trudeau and the Obama or the soon to be New POTUS. Lets just hope Trudeau has better luck than Diefenbaker did with Kennedy. Let’s also hope that Trudeau can help in setting Canada apart from the U.S and ensure that our distinctly Canadian attitudes are well represented in all aspects of the relationship between our countries.
