Bearded Wisdom

 

CANADA

Bearded Wisdom

Where the US and Canada meet has long been celebrated as the longest unguarded border in the world. Lately, it is the longest closed unguarded border in the world.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently announced that Canada would keep the border closed through late February due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Buffalo News reported.

Closing the border is a bold, controversial move. The US is Canada’s biggest trading partner and movement between the two countries in ordinary times is enormous. But Trudeau was inured to pressure during 2020, when he faced a series of tests. Iran shot down a Ukrainian commercial airliner carrying at least 63 Canadian citizens and scores of others who were traveling to Canada early in the year, for instance. And Trudeau weathered scandals, like news that he awarded a massive government contract for student grants to a charity that employed his family members.

Trudeau, 49, grew a beard in 2020. It became a symbol of his transformation from the bright-eyed young Liberal leader who pledged to inject new energy into Canada when he won office in 2015 to the scrappier, more battle-scarred politician he is a today, Politico wrote.

He has also found the temerity to remain steadfast in a diplomatic standoff against China, where two Canadians were arrested on espionage charges in what appeared to be retaliation for the Canadian arrest of a Chinese citizen, Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, on American fraud charges. Wanzhou is now under house arrest in her Vancouver mansion and fighting extradition to the US, while the two Canadians, an ex-diplomat and a businessman, were allowed to call home for Christmas, the Guardian wrote.

Trudeau runs a minority government, so he could lose his job if the opposition chose to bring him down. But he told Reuters in an interview that he intends to stay in office for years to come. To that end, he recently reshuffled his cabinet, a move Bloomberg said likely presaged him calling a new election. His approval rating stands at 50 percent, not a bad starting point before a campaign.

If Trudeau is around for the next few years, he has some big social-political issues to face. Canada has a long-running white supremacist movement that has roots in the country’s founding, as CTV News wrote. Canadian experts recently issued warnings about rightwing populist instability in the country. The Canadian government is already considering labeling the Proud Boys as a terrorist group. Public Radio International’s The World described the Proud Boys as a “far-right extremist group involved in the US Capital riots.”

History will judge how he rises to the challenge.