Canada will pay a steep price if Donald Trump becomes U.S. president

The Canadian hand-wringing over Donald Trump is palpable. There is hardly a media or political figure who won't go out of their way to denounce the Republican candidate for president of the United States. The most recent one to jump aboard was James Moore, former Conservative cabinet minister, who painted quite a dark and foreboding picture on CBC Radio's The Early Edition Friday morning.
They may all be correct. However, it isn't up to Canadians to elect or defeat Trump. That is the job given to American voters, who hopefully will turn out at the polls in droves in November.
I watched almost all of Trump's acceptance speech at the Republican convention on Thursday. I wanted to hear it for myself - not through a variety of media filters. I also wanted to compare it with earlier speeches I'd seen him make after primary wins. Those, I thought at the time, were stream of consciousness speeches - with him saying whatever came into his head. I wondered if this would be similar, given that this time he was speaking to a large audience of non-Republicans, most of whom were potential voters who tuned in precisely because he had won the nomination.
This is what I took away from the speech.
1 - If Trump wins, Canada will pay a steep price. Almost for sure, he will demand that the Canadian defence budget go up substantially as a price for Canada being part of NATO. In many ways, this is justified - Canada has coasted along on U.S. defence spending for generations, going back at least to the 1950s.
Trump will also do his best to renegotiate NAFTA - he said so in his speech. There is no way any new treaty or bilateral deal will be more favourable to Canada. Instead, what is far more likely is that most Canadian exports will be treated the way softwood lumber has been - every decade or so, there is a threat of retaliation or import duties, and Canadian jobs are treated as being secondary to American jobs.
2 - A wall may not be built at the Canadian border, as he promises will happen at the Mexican border. But there will be considerable "thickening." It will become harder for people who are in Canada, particularly permanent residents who are citizens of another country, to get into the U.S. Many more people will face much more stringent questioning at the land border, or at airports or seaports. This is all part of his emphasis on making America safer.
3 - Canada's favoured relationship with the U.S., which had faltered a bit when Stephen Harper was prime minister, has improved under Justin Trudeau. It will get much worse under Trump - he has no particular affection for Canada and he and Trudeau are, in many ways, polar opposites.
4 - There will be no global action on climate change. Period.
5 - There will be decisive action to deal with ISIS and Al-Qaeda. This is necessary and overdue. The Barack Obama approach to the Middle East and terrorism has not worked, and the U.S., working within NATO, is the only possible force which can stamp out this raging fire. Even if both are all but eliminated, lone wolf terrorists such as the one who struck last week in Nice will continue to spread mayhem and kill innocent people. Today's Munich attack may also be a lone wolf terrorist incident - it's too soon to say right now. There also needs to be an end to the ongoing Syrian civil war so that people there can finally get on with their lives. Hopefully, that will be a side benefit of actions against the two terrorist groups.
6 - American nationalism will be a more potent political force. Trump is speaking to a strong strain within the American body politic - one that has risen and fallen, risen and fallen over the many years since the American Revolution.
7 - American voters will make the right decision, no matter what they do. Democracy, as Winston Churchill famously said, is "the worst form of government, except for all the others." That doesn't mean voters, acting collectively, always pick the very best candidate. But if they make an obvious mistake, in a democracy as robust as the United States, they will correct that action at the first possible moment.