Sometimes when you try to send a message, the intended target isn’t the only one you reach.
The Obfuscator-in-Chief struck again recently as U.S. President Donald Trump renamed Lake Ontario as Lake America, a move that has now been adopted by some agencies and search engines as required by statute.
There are at least three reasons why this is just ridiculous and ill-conceived, all of which should be obvious to everyone but Trump.
As Prime Minister Mark Carney pointed out, the name Lake Ontario itself comes from a Wendat word that means “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big”. It has been used for 400 years, longer even than either Canada or the U.S. has existed formally as a nation.
Secondly, no one here is going to call it that, so as a trade pressure-tactic it’s not especially effective.
Third, it’s going to reignite our Canadian passion to punish the perpetrator by reducing cross-border travel (again).
Over the last year and a half, the one thing that should be obvious is that we Canadians take insults seriously, and we aren’t afraid to let it show in how and where we spend.
As “Buy Canadian” campaigns grow and expand, travel to the U.S. has also dropped dramatically to the tune of 25% or 3.3 billion dollars last year alone. More than two-thirds of people who stayed on this side of the border said it was specifically because of the trade dispute.
So Mr. Trump, as you prepare for the mid-terms and continue to try and find a way out of Iran, please keep your pen away from our part of the map! If you signed as many trade deals as frivolous proclamations, we would all be better off!
I’m Paul Martin and that’s what I see looking Beyond the Headlines
