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The next Prime Minister of Canada will get along fine with the President.

October 21, 2015

For years, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has served as a welcome counterpoint to Barack Obama, and the object of wistful musings about what a fine President of the United States he would have been, if only he had been born south of the border: generally realistic about the jihad threat, determined to do what was necessary to meet that threat, and a strong supporter of Israel.

But now Canada at last has its own Obama: Justin Trudeau. And that means that Canada, like the United States, faces deep trouble ahead.

The new Prime Minister of Canada, like Obama, has consistently downplayed the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat and ascribed it to other causes. Christine Williams, a Canadian journalist and a Federally appointed Director with the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, has noted that in the wake of the Boston Marathon jihad bombing, Trudeau issued a bizarre statement: “There is no question that this happened because of someone who feels completely excluded, someone who feels completely at war with innocence, at war with society.”

At war with innocence. That rivals the Obama Administration’s ascribing the Fort Hood jihad massacre to “workplace violence.” In reality, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev explained after the bombing that he and his brother committed murder at the Marathon because they wanted to defend Islam. Tamerlan Tsarnaev had vowed to die for Islam.

But – also like Obama – as far as Justin Trudeau is concerned, if you’re looking into Islam as having anything to do with jihad terror attacks, you’re looking in the wrong place. Williams notes that Trudeau in 2013 “came under fire for his participation in Canada’s largest Islamic Conference, held in Toronto, and entitled, ‘Reviving the Islamic Spirit.’ The criticism was over the conference's sponsor, IRFAN [International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy], which was stripped of its federal charity status because of its ties to the terrorist group, Hamas. Even the moderate Muslim Canadian Congress advised Trudeau not to attend.”

Did the Hamas links put Trudeau off? Not any more than the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ ties to Hamas stop American politicians – at least those on the Left – from appearing and glad-handing at its conferences. Trudeau,” Williams reports, “according to a report, smothered the Islamic conference in platitudes. He apparently went so far as to imply a totally inapt comparison in trying to liken the fierce division between English and French Canada, under Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, to that of the current divisions between mainstream Canada and Islam.”

Trudeau has been behaving this way for years. In 2011, he visited the Al-Sunnah Al-Nabawiah mosque in Montreal, which was identified by U.S. intelligence officials as a site where “known al-Qaeda members were recruited, facilitated or trained.”

What is a man like Justin Trudeau, with the kind of record that he has, likely to do as Prime Minister? Pamela Geller points out that he is already on record with some very specific intentions that should be disquieting to anyone interested in defending the West: “Canada,” Trudeau said in September, “must immediately accept 25,000 Syrian refugees We can expect the following from Justin Trudeau in the short term.” He didn’t say anything about trying to screen out jihadis from among them – if that were even possible.

Trudeau will also restore Canada’s diplomatic relations with Iran and end his country’s involvement in military operations against the Islamic State. He will doubtless aid Obama in pressuring Israel at the G8 summit, where Harper had stood in the President’s way. At home, Trudeau will scrap a bill that strips convicted terrorists of their Canadian citizenship, along with part of Canada’s counter-terror legislation.

In sum, Justin Trudeau, young, handsome, born to the scepter courtesy his father, will fit right in with Barack Obama, David Cameron and the other leaders of the Western world today. And that’s why we’re in the fix we’re in.