Where is Kevin Vickers Now That We Might Need Him?

Think about it. What are we going to do if Donald Trump takes a shine to our lithe, very attractive prime minister and decides to grab Justin by the pussy or, as it's known, the Trump Handshake.

We've seen this play out before.  Who can forget Tony Blair's bromance with Bill Clinton and how that morphed into something else altogether when Blair got into the leather stuff with Clinton's successor. That was the hardcore master-slave, no holds barred stuff that even led to a Middle East quagmire and major war crimes once Tony succumbed to Bush/Cheney.

We know that Justin can't stand up to anybody - First Nations, environmentalists, all British Columbians and most ordinary Canadians excepted. To the powerful, however, he's a pushover or, when it comes to Trump, a bendover.

Notice how Trump's inauguration had Trudeau and his cabinet gather up their crinolines and hightail it to Calgary as though General Sherman himself was about to march through Ottawa? They got to Calgary and hunkered down until Trump dispatched his son in law with a bag of Midol.

And now it begins. The Toronto Star headline says it all - Canada signals possible U.S. trade deal that excludes Mexico.

The U.S. and Canada are signalling most of the pain from reworking the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will hit Mexico, with an adviser to Donald Trump flying to Calgary to tell Justin Trudeau’s team that commerce is balanced and running smoothly north of the border.

Trudeau’s cabinet gathered in the nation’s oil hub to weigh Trump’s impact, as Canada’s ambassador to the U.S. said he would consider bilateral measures with the U.S. in talks about the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The comments — which came as Trump signed an executive order that abruptly ended the decades-old U.S. tilt toward free trade — suggest the new administration is splintering the continental pact as the president prepares to meet Mexico’s Enrique Pena Nieto later this month.

...

“I don’t think he should be enormously worried because Canada is held in very high regard,” Stephen Schwarzman, chief executive officer at Blackstone Group LP and head of the president’s strategic and policy forum, told reporters after speaking to cabinet. “We have balanced trade between the U.S. and Canada, and that’s not the kind of situation where you should be worrying about the kind of issues you are.”

David MacNaughton, Trudeau’s ambassador in Washington, said upon arrival in Calgary that his focus is on avoiding Canada being “collateral damage” in trade actions aimed at China and Mexico. “We will co-operate on trilateral matters when it’s in our interest and we’ll be looking to do things that are in our interest bilaterally also. Some of them may be within NAFTA, some may not be,” he said Sunday night.

The message is pretty clear. What Donald Trump wants, Justin is all too willing to deliver. We will go along to get along. We've already told Trump what he most wants to hear - that we're terrified of him.