Joanne McIntosh

The insult didn't start in a Canadian liquor store. It started at a podium in Washington. It is insulting to call one of the oldest allies, a country that sent soldiers to Normandy, Korea, Afghanistan, a state of the Union that should be absorbed. It is insulting to threaten economic warfare against a neighbour whose economic integration with America runs so deep. It is insulting to interfere in the internal politics of a sovereign ally - funding preferred candidates, amplifying separatist movements, treating a democratic election as an opportunity for destabilisation. It is insulting to stop traffic at the Friendship Bridge, a structure Canada literally built and named after the relationship being dismantled by the people now calling it insulting. It is insulting to charge entry fees to citizens of a country that shares the world's longest undefended border, a border that has been a symbol of peaceful coexistence for two centuries. It is insulting to revoke Canada's invitation to the Board of Peace for the crime of defending its own sovereignty at Davos. Canada didn't remove American spirits from shelves unprovoked. It removed them after the US spent eighteen months removing every assumption of mutual respect that made the relationship worth maintaining. #Canada #Trump