At last week’s Calgary Stampede, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre gave a nearly half-hour speech in which he made his case for why he should never be trusted with the keys to our country, cribbing notes from US Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth’s speech to the generals.

Most notably, Poilievre wants Canada’s military to “reinstill a warrior culture, not a woke culture.”

While Canada has built a reputation over the handful of wars in which we have participated as fierce fighters, we have never defined ourselves as a warrior nation or our military as a warrior culture. Indeed, it was Canada’s Lester B. Pearson who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering United Nations peacekeeping.

The warrior comments can be found at about minute 20:40 in his speech (below). Fortunately, YouTube permits playing it at double-speed so the whole thing can be listened to in a tolerable amount of time, if you are so inclined.

It is worth comparing it to the speech made last fall by Pete Hegseth to a room full of the United States’ top military leaders taken off their posts to hear him. Full video of that below. The similarities are striking in tone, content, and intent.

It makes one wonder whether Pierre Poilievre understands the country he seeks to lead, shares any of our overarching collective values, or has any ambition for us as a nation rather than for himself as an individual.

This is far from the first time he has shown that he is philosophically close to American MAGA values. It is strikingly clear that he views Canada as little more than an American vassal state, serving no purpose of our own.

This week, Prime Minister Mark Carney honoured American Senator Lindsey Graham (no relation!) by absurdly stating, “Throughout his career, he stood resolutely in defence of democracy and freedom,” in spite of Graham’s own record of standing very much against democracy and freedom in the United States. He may have, at some point, embraced democratic values, but those died after he lost the 2016 primary to Donald Trump and fully embraced him (following a game of golf) instead.

There is no honour or value in beatifying a deplorable human being just because that person has died. When Trump finally kicks the bucket, there will be dancing in the streets throughout the world. It will be important for Canada’s leaders to figure out on which side of history we wish to find ourselves at that moment. Let there be no kind words of condolence offered for his end, only for the end of the suffering he has caused.

Carney is systematically out-manoeuvring the Trump administration in policy and negotiation with little regard to optics. Optics are often the enemy of good policy, but they are nevertheless real, and they do matter. There is no doubt that saying a few kind words about a disgusting abomination of a human being upon his death is intended to treat the American administration with the same kind of spoiled child handling that we witnessed at last week’s NATO summit by the entire collection of the alliance’s leaders.

We have to avoid the trap, however, of going too far, of placating and appeasing Donald Trump in our efforts to avoid his uncontained wrath, of evading his ruthless vengeance on even the vaguest perceived slight. There is a great deal more at stake than the orange menace’s ego.

The American dictatorship will not die with Trump. The American threat to our sovereignty and our economy will not die with Trump. The MAGA movement itself will not die with Trump. His successor will neither be as profoundly stupid nor as easy to manipulate as Trump.

The wealthy oligarchs behind the MAGA movement are watching, looking for vulnerabilities, testing the limits of what allies and adversaries will reject, tolerate, or accept. Every inch that we give now will be taken as a mile later by the smarter, more ruthless dictator that follows.

We are already reorienting our trade and defence posture away from the United States, mostly toward Europe, as last week’s submarine announcement showed.

While building out these alternatives, we can continue to manage Trump’s ego in the hope that his death will bring the defeat of his movement followed by a great reset, a restoration of how things were until November of 2016, an end to the global nightmare that we are currently living. It is a fantasy, but a pleasant one.

But the real risk is that in outwardly placating the Americans, even while discreetly breaking our interdependence with them, we are enabling and legitimising the alternative. Calling Lindsey Graham a defender of democracy and freedom when his record is anything-but lends credence to the Maple MAGA movement and their equal lack of respect for democracy and freedom in Canada.

Which leaves us vulberable to another dangerous position. One in which we leave the door open to Pierre Poilievre’s vision for Canada, where we embrace the MAGA movement with an eye toward including ourselves within, and subservient to, the great white warrior culture described by Pete Hegseth and the rest of the Trump cult.

We will get there by legitimising Lindsey Graham’s legacy and accepting Pierre Poilievre’s rhetoric. Our elbows will need to go just a little bit higher.