1 week Ago By [email protected] (Martin Regg Cohn)
Perhaps we should admire the fearless governor of Utah for venturing into the lion’s den at Queen’s Park this week. Doug Ford did not roar. The premier did not bellow.
For even amid trade wars, politicians still travel on trade missions. No matter how unfathomable or unattainable the mission might seem to be. And so Ford played the role of gracious Canadian host to his felicitous American visitor, hailing Gov.
Spencer Cox as “a friend of mine ...
from the great state of Utah.” As if recognizing a friendly delegation at a U.S.
political convention. For the show must go on, no matter how surreal. Business as usual, no matter how bad for business in these tariff times.
“I told the governor — and this is very, very true — Canadians love Americans,” Ford mused as he introduced Cox to reporters. “Americans love Canadians.” Perhaps that was once true, in a manner of speaking (albeit best left unsaid in today’s climate).
Possibly the premier was disarmed by the courtly manners of the Utah governor, who does not present as the Ugly American. “We will be stronger together,” the governor said gamely. From strength to strength? There was an air of absurdity if not futility to his opening gambit.
I asked what he would tell Canadians in a country still reeling from the devastating tariffs and indefensible rhetoric emanating from the White House. Reading the room, the governor found his voice. “My hope is that we can get to a place where those tariffs are removed .
.. I believe in the importance of free trade, especially with our Canadian partners,” he told me.
“I sense — I don’t just sense, I’m told about — that sense of betrayal that is being felt. And I understand that.” The soft-spoken Cox came bearing blandishments and bonhomie.
On cue, he told the premier what he wanted to hear. Mission accomplished for Ford. For Cox is a classic Utah governor — circumspect, almost Canadian by disposition.
But will he tell Trump what he needs to hear — not just from the ups and downs of the stock and bond markets? Can the governor serve as a messenger to the White House? “As a state, we don’t have control over what’s happening at the federal level (but) we’ve had conversations with the president and his team, and we will get through this,” he replied. The Republican governor believes in miracles. If you don’t believe me, consider his up and down relationship with the president.
“I think he’s disingenuous. I think he’s dangerous. I think he represents the worst of what our great country stands for,” Cox said when Trump first sought the party’s nomination a decade ago, declaring that he’d never vote for him.
Like most Republicans, he later supported Trump — until the Jan. 6 attack on Capitol Hill, when he blamed the president and called for his resignation. But that changed again after last year’s attempted assassination of Trump — sign of divine intervention: “I truly believe that God had a hand in saving you,” he wrote in an endorsement letter.
“Now, because of that miracle, you have the opportunity to ...
unify and save our country.” In that same spirit, Cox took on this week’s trade mission with missionary zeal. He came with a flock of fellow travellers and traders from Utah trying to do deals despite the obstacles thrown in their way and ours.
Leading the entourage alongside the governor was his eminence grise — and bête noire in the eyes of the president — Jeff Flake, the former senator from Arizona. Flake rose to national prominence during Trump’s first term for publicly standing up to the president when other Republicans wouldn’t dare, but now advocates on behalf of Utah’s business exporters as chair of World Trade Center Utah. Like Cox, Flake is a Mormon and former missionary who is at home in Utah, where they both got their education.
When they are not praying for the faithful, they are proselytizing for free trade and a Canada strong and free, mindful of the biblical injunction that good fences (and, arguably, undefended borders) make good neighbours. Flake told me later that he couldn’t explain why Canada had been targeted by Trump. There were many things he couldn’t explain about the president he once critiqued as a senator, he mused diplomatically.
All that said, the timing of their pilgrimage to Queen’s Park couldn’t have been worse. The trip was planned last year, long before anyone could foresee today’s tumult. And so, with Flake at his side, Cox found himself in the awkward position of being the first governor to venture to Canada at the worst possible time.
“I encourage my fellow governors to make the trip up here,” he said earnestly. A letter is going out soon to his counterparts across America exhorting them to follow in his footsteps. The Utahns, as they call themselves — people of friendship and fellowship — would be a hard act to follow.
Don’t expect any other governors to try anytime soon. Unless they believe in miracles. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request.
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