Trump, Canada’s fault

Allow me to make an aside right away: Jean Chrétien never said that, “the best country in the world”. This memorable quote, forever associated with the man with two second languages, is apocryphal. I know: I did my research.

This is not the case for everyone, it seems, in the story I am about to tell you.

On American TV, therefore, host Bill Maher devoted eight minutes of Real Timehis weekly talk show, to demonstrate that the United States was now a better country than Canada¹. And poof in the teeth, the beaver.

Obviously, Bill Maher did not pretend to present an academic thesis. His presentation cannot even be described as proper journalism. The host pilots a comedy show and perfectly assumes his scathing cynicism, not to mention his legendary bad faith.

All the same. Broadcast on HBO, Real Time is watched every week by 600,000 Americans. Bill Maher’s presentation was covered by many Canadian media outlets and commentators, but few bothered to verify the figures presented or add any context.

It would have been useful though. “Of the 15 cities in North America with the worst air pollution, 14 are in Canada,” says the comedian, for example. He fails to say that this data is completely abnormal, since it was taken in 2023, when monstrous forest fires were affecting the air quality of several Canadian cities.

In another telling example, Bill Maher cites an excerpt from a Fraser Institute report: among 30 countries offering universal health care, “Canada is the country that spends the most on health care, in proportion to its economy (13.3%)”.

The host does not mention that the United States is spending even more (16.6% of its GDP in 2023, according to the OECD), but was excluded from the analysis since it does not offer health care free to all Americans…

This is not a trivial detail, especially since the exercise consists precisely of proving that the United States does better than Canada!

It’s true, Canada has serious problems. From coast to coast, newspapers are full of reports on the housing crisis, hospitals that are overflowing, food banks that are no longer supplying, etc. More and more Canadians are falling through the cracks of a social safety net that was once the pride of the country.

It is also true that the American economy is doing better than ours. But according to Bill Maher, the United States is supplanting Canada at all levels. We are still talking about a country where mass killings have practically become news items. A country where millions of ordinary citizens pray to heaven not to get sick… because it costs too much.

With an annual salary of 10 million US dollars, Bill Maher will never have this problem. The American health care system is extraordinary for those who can afford it.

Bill Maher’s presentation takes a decidedly absurd turn when he reveals the cause of the Canadian disaster: its “extreme wokism”.

The comedian presents the debacle in Canada as a “lesson” to learn for American Democrats, who must do everything to prevent the United States from suffering the same fate. “The moral of the story is that yes, you can go too far left. And when you do that, you end up pushing people from the center to the right,” he warns.

Here, Bill Maher’s reasoning escapes me: after all, Canada is still led by the woke chief, Justin Trudeau. The country has not shifted to the right, at least not yet. So how can the facilitator learn this lesson?

I don’t understand any better the causal link between wokism and the problems listed in the eight-minute segment, like air pollution. The forests would have burned because… too woke?

Bill Maher does not explain these links, but pulls a rabbit out of his hat: the photo of a weirdo who made headlines, in the fall of 2022, after appearing in front of his Ontario students wearing oversized breast prostheses.

Ta-dam! This is the proof we were waiting for!

At the time, the school came to the defense of the teacher (who then identified as a woman) with the unbelievable chest… in the name of respect for gender diversity. She had, certainly, erred on the side of wokism. On this, Bill Maher is right. “And that’s why people vote for Trump,” he concludes.

So, if I understand correctly, Americans will vote for Donald Trump because an Ontario school showed excessive tolerance towards a teacher in 2022?

But then, why did they vote for Trump… in 2016?

I venture an answer: because it has absolutely nothing to do with it. Because the Ontario weirdo didn’t just have huge fake breasts this week on Bill Maher’s talk show. He had a broad back, too. Just like Canada, in fact.