Russia is a vast nation ruled by an imperial president. Its economy is controlled by a handful of oligarchs who hoard the country’s wealth for personal gain—wealth they’re allowed to keep, so long as they pledge loyalty to the supreme leader.
Sound familiar?
It gets worse. Russia believes its empire should include nations like Ukraine. With a population of 37 million, Ukraine is a small country fighting to remain free and independent.
Why does Russia want Ukraine? Natural resources, food production, and a highly skilled workforce.
Ukraine has had some issues – regional conflicts and even some separatist movements. But overall, Ukraine has tremendous promise.
But Russia has something Ukraine doesn’t: overwhelming military and economic power. And ruthlessness. Russia will stop at nothing. They’ve meddled in Ukraine’s politics, fueled separatist movements, cut off economic ties, and when they couldn’t crush them economically and Ukraine refused to surrender, they attacked.
The parallels to our current situation with the US are scary.
There are two differences. Canada hasn’t faced a military invasion—yet. The U.S. is trying to crush us economically. Make no mistake – they are trying to crush our economy. And for what? Supposedly in the name of their security. We don’t police the border well enough. And they are in need of our energy supplies. The purchase of Canadian energy is why they run a trade deficit with us.
We’ve agreed to spend billions on border security. And we’ll divert police resources that should be protecting our citizens and money that should be going into healthcare and other needed investments – just to appease the US. But they gave away their game on this. That’s not enough. They want to crush us.
The other big difference? We don’t have a Zelensky. None of our current leaders are up to the task. They’ve had years to articulate a clear vision for Canada. Truth be told, they are the reason we are so vulnerable. But if they magically had a new vision, we’d have seen it by now.
They are so incompetent – all of them, that they haven’t been able to bring our government into the digital age, let alone retool our economy to be competitive in the new world. But Ukraine has delivered e-government, while they were fighting for their very existence.
We need new leadership—leaders who can unite us and deliver a plan to win against this new imperial threat. Because this is our last stand. If we lose this battle we slide into being not a state – but a colony of the US. Make no mistake, if they won’t give statehood to Puerto Rico, they won’t offer it to us.
This is our new Vimy Ridge. We fight or we lose the country.
Who can lead us?
The Liberals have started a contest to find fresh ideas. We should demand the NDP and Conservatives do the same.
In a country of close to 40 million people, we need to find our Zelensky.
