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Perspective | The trucker 'convoys' have roiled politics in Canada — and the U.S. Why that's rare. – The Washington Post

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For weeks, reports about the Canadian truckers’ occupation of Ottawa generated headlines, alongside stories about the support they enjoyed in the United States and Justin Trudeau’s controversial decision to end the protest. The trucker protests in Canada reflected a sense of anti-government popularism that emerged under Trump in the United States. Yet they were unpopular among most Canadians.

It is rare for Canadian politics to spill over so concretely into the United States, just as U.S. politics typically has little impact in Canada. But American and Canadian politics used to be far more intertwined.

In the 19th century, political trends in the United States often made their way northward as American groups worked to influence political movements in Canada. These situations usually resulted in violence and fueled Canadian fears of annexation before, and even after, the 1867 Confederation, when Canada achieved self-government within the framework of the British Commonwealth. The intermingling died down as the establishment of the Confederation installed at the root of Canadian politics a philosophy of improving upon the flaws Canadians saw in the early U.S. republic — one antithetical to some American ideals of liberty.

On a cold December day in 1837, on Navy Island in the Niagara River — which separates the United States from Canada — a group of revolutionaries proclaimed the Republic of Canada. In a symbolic gesture, their leader, politician and journalist William Lyon Mackenzie, raised the flag of the new country, independent from Britain. It was a blue flag with two stars, one for Lower Canada (present-day Quebec), the other for Upper Canada (present-day Ontario).

During the following months these revolutionaries shook Canada with guerrilla attacks, particularly in the south. Canadians organized these strikes with the support of American enthusiasts. Together with Canadian sympathizers, the Americans brought supplies to the rebels in an American-owned ship, the Caroline.

British forces crossed into U.S. territory to pursue them, set fire to the ship and hurled it, all ablaze, over Niagara Falls. Several people on both sides of the skirmish were injured and one died.

The entire incident occurred on American soil and caused a decade-long diplomatic embarrassment for both countries. The leaders of the rebellion, including Mackenzie himself, fled to the United States. In January 1838, President Martin Van Buren took steps to ensure the United States’ official neutrality in the Canadian rebellions and avoid a war with Britain.

But the protests simmered on. Groups of American supporters of Canadian independence organized in a secret network known as the Hunters’ Lodges, headquartered in Cleveland. The organization swelled over the following year, with estimates ranging from 15,000 to 200,000 members. They were popular especially in Northern border areas, from Maine to Wisconsin. But the groups organized as far south as Kentucky, and they also grew in British North America. The lodges launched two more failed attacks into Canada, in November and December 1838, when hundreds of Americans crossed into Canada only to be pushed out again by local militias with the help of a few regular troops.

The Canadian rebellions and the border conflicts that followed them were a local manifestation of larger continental and transatlantic upheavals. Jacksonian democracy had swept the United States. Broader economic shocks, including the Panic of 1837, caused anxiety and hardship in both the United States and Canada. Borders were in flux. Texas had seceded from Mexico in 1836 and stood poised to join the United States, and the unsettled Maine-Canada border created territorial tensions to the north.

To Mackenzie’s American supporters, the conflict in Canada was simply a movement for self-government and a conflict between autocracy and liberty. They saw their involvement as a natural continuation of the anti-colonial struggle that had birthed the American republic in 1776.

But, republican enthusiasms in Canada had a very different root. Those advocating for change usually expressed frustrations with Britain’s colonial policies rather than admiration of American models. Canada’s imperial and monarchical allegiances actually remained strong. The chaos of American politics in the 1830s and 1840s, punctuated by street riots and recurrent violence, tarnished the appeal of republicanism and American-style federalism. To most Canadian colonists, the American experiment in democracy was a cautionary tale of weak central government and mob rule, and pointed clearly to the value of remaining part of the British Empire.

American style-republicanism also struggled to catch on in Canada, because Canadians had fundamentally different visions of community, law and freedom. Historian Michel Ducharme explains that an understanding of liberty that located government legitimacy solely in the popular will guided American political institutions. By contrast, similar to the British, colonial Canadians favored an understanding of liberty as the sum of individual rights that a state had the duty to guarantee to all its citizens. This interpretation did not assume direct political participation for everyone, nor did it legitimize revolution and rebellion whenever the government lost popular support.

Ideological debates over monarchy and republicanism suffused colonial Canadian culture, from journalism to literature. But Canadians came to a very different conclusion than their neighbors to the south. While by the 1840s most Canadians believed that they should have a say in their government, they favored gradual reform within the parameters of the constitutional monarchy and the British Empire rather than a radical break and American-style republicanism.

Because it lacked the expected popular support from within, Canadian and British forces defeated Mackenzie’s revolutionary movement. Even though political conversations about republicanism and annexation to the United States continued on and off for another 100 years, as historian David Smith argues, republicanism never acquired widespread traction across the provinces, and the monarchy never faced another serious challenge in Canada again.

In 1867, one of the founding fathers of the Canadian Confederation, Georges-Etienne Cartier, summed up the American influence on the formation of Canadian parliamentary democracy. Canadians had 80 years to “contemplate republicanism in action” in the United States. Seeing its defects convinced them “that purely democratic institutions could not be conducive to the peace and prosperity of nations.”

The Canadian experiment instead intended to avoid the mistakes of the United States. The British North America Act that marked the creation of the Confederation of Canada as a parliamentary liberal democracy under the British Crown included the phrase “Peace, order and good government” to describe the lawmaking powers of the Parliament. Over the years, the phrase has become the Canadian counterpart to the American “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

This fundamental difference explains why it’s so rare for political movements to cross the northern border of the United States in the 21st century. Though they are in some ways similar and exist as neighbors, American and Canadian politics have fundamentally different philosophies at their root.

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RFK Jr. says Trump would push to remove fluoride from drinking water. ‘It’s possible,’ Trump says

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PHOENIX (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent proponent of debunked public health claims whom Donald Trump has promised to put in charge of health initiatives, said Saturday that Trump would push to remove fluoride from drinking water on his first day in office if elected president.

Fluoride strengthens teeth and reduces cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear and tear, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The addition of low levels of fluoride to drinking water has long been considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century.

Kennedy made the declaration Saturday on the social media platform X alongside a variety of claims about the heath effects of fluoride.

“On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S​. water systems to remove fluoride from public water,” Kennedy wrote. Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, “want to Make America Healthy Again,” he added, repeating a phrase Trump often uses and links to Kennedy.

Trump told NBC News on Sunday that he had not spoken to Kennedy about fluoride yet, “but it sounds OK to me. You know it’s possible.”

The former president declined to say whether he would seek a Cabinet role for Kennedy, a job that would require Senate confirmation, but added, “He’s going to have a big role in the administration.”

Asked whether banning certain vaccines would be on the table, Trump said he would talk to Kennedy and others about that. Trump described Kennedy as “a very talented guy and has strong views.”

The sudden and unexpected weekend social media post evoked the chaotic policymaking that defined Trump’s White House tenure, when he would issue policy declarations on Twitter at virtually all hours. It also underscored the concerns many experts have about Kennedy, who has long promoted debunked theories about vaccine safety, having influence over U.S. public health.

In 1950, federal officials endorsed water fluoridation to prevent tooth decay, and continued to promote it even after fluoride toothpaste brands hit the market several years later. Though fluoride can come from a number of sources, drinking water is the main source for Americans, researchers say.

Officials lowered their recommendation for drinking water fluoride levels in 2015 to address a tooth condition called fluorosis, that can cause splotches on teeth and was becoming more common in U.S. kids.

In August, a federal agency determined “with moderate confidence” that there is a link between higher levels of fluoride exposure and lower IQ in kids. The National Toxicology Program based its conclusion on studies involving fluoride levels at about twice the recommended limit for drinking water.

A federal judge later cited that study in ordering the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to further regulate fluoride in drinking water. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen cautioned that it’s not certain that the amount of fluoride typically added to water is causing lower IQ in kids, but he concluded that mounting research points to an unreasonable risk that it could be. He ordered the EPA to take steps to lower that risk, but didn’t say what those measures should be.

In his X post Saturday, Kennedy tagged Michael Connett, the lead attorney representing the plaintiff in that lawsuit, the environmental advocacy group Food & Water Watch.

Kennedy’s anti-vaccine organization has a lawsuit pending against news organizations including The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy is on leave from the group but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.

What role Kennedy might hold if Trump wins on Tuesday remains unclear. Kennedy recently told NewsNation that Trump asked him to “reorganize” agencies including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and some agencies under the Department of Agriculture.

But for now, the former independent presidential candidate has become one of Trump’s top surrogates. Trump frequently mentions having the support of Kennedy, a scion of a Democratic dynasty and the son of former Attorney General Robert Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy traveled with Trump Friday and spoke at his rallies in Michigan and Wisconsin.

Trump said Saturday that he told Kennedy: “You can work on food, you can work on anything you want” except oil policy.

“He wants health, he wants women’s health, he wants men’s health, he wants kids, he wants everything,” Trump added.

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Danielle Smith receives overwhelming support at United Conservative Party convention

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Danielle Smith receives overwhelming support at United Conservative Party convention

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America’s Election: What it Means to Canadians

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Americans and Canadians are cousins that is true. Allies today but long ago people were at loggerheads mostly because of the British Empire and American ambitions.

Canadians appreciate our cousins down south enough to visit them many millions of times over the year. America is Canada’s largest and most important trading partner. As a manufacturer, I can attest to this personally. My American clients have allowed our firm to grow and prosper over the past few decades. There is a problem we have been seeing, a problem where nationalism, both political and economic has been creating a roadblock to our trade relationship.

Both Democrats and Republicans have shown a willingness to play the “buy only American Made product” card, a sounding board for all things isolationist, nationalistic and small-mindedness. We all live on this small planet, and purchase items made from all over the world. Preferences as to what to buy and where it is made are personal choices, never should they become a platform of national pride and thuggery. This has brought fear into the hearts of many Canadians who manufacture for and service the American Economy in some way. This fear will be apparent when the election is over next week.

Canadians are not enemies of America, but allies and friends with a long tradition of supporting our cousins back when bad sh*t happens. We have had enough of the American claim that they want free trade, only to realize that they do so long as it is to their benefit. Tariffs, and undue regulations applied to exporters into America are applied, yet American industry complains when other nations do the very same to them. Seriously! Democrats have said they would place a preference upon doing business with American firms before foreign ones, and Republicans wish to tariff many foreign nations into oblivion. Rhetoric perhaps, but we need to take these threats seriously. As to you the repercussions that will come should America close its doors to us.

Tit for tat neighbors. Tariff for tariff, true selfish competition with no fear of the American Giant. Do you want to build homes in America? Over 33% of all wood comes from Canada. Tit for tat. Canada’s mineral wealth can be sold to others and place preference upon the highest bidder always. You know who will win there don’t you America, the deep-pocketed Chinese.

Reshaping our alliances with others. If America responds as has been threatened, Canadians will find ways to entertain themselves elsewhere. Imagine no Canadian dollars flowing into the Northern States, Florida or California? The Big Apple without its friendly Maple Syrup dip. Canadians will realize just how significant their spending is to America and use it to our benefit, not theirs.

Clearly we will know if you prefer Canadian friendship to Donald Trumps Bravado.

China, Saudi Arabia & Russia are not your friends in America. Canada, Japan, Taiwan the EU and many other nations most definitely are. Stop playing politics, and carry out business in an unethical fashion. Treat allies as they should be treated.

Steven Kaszab
Bradford, Ontario
skaszab@yahoo.ca

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