Opinion: Innovation, not retribution needed from Canada in Trump era

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Based on all the recent chaos, it’s clear that Donald Trump is taking a leaf out of his old playbook, The Art of the Deal. He is trying to out-psych Canada to make it seem like we are in a weaker position.

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The Canadian mouse is being played with. We are pinned under the big paw of a giant, unpredictable orange cat. And that big orange tabby has retractable claws. Plan A is to exercise our own leverage back. It is an attempt to beat Trump at his own game.

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But mere transactions, or tit-for-tat deals are the empty calories of a much more complicated and interesting world of possibilities. The true art of the deal is one of innovation — where one can generate greater outcomes than any quick transaction could ever dream possible.

What I am talking about here is to synergistically go beyond simplistic positions, and to drill down into all the core interests that may really underlie the fear or the antagonism in the first place.

Once all these deeper and underlying interests (and possibilities) are fully revealed, then the creativity of conflict starts to unfold. It is to brainstorm and identify a wider range of options that neither side may have even thought of in the first place.

It has the potential to generate entirely new ways of thinking and interacting that will be even better than the initial, stubborn postures of either side. This is called interest-based bargaining, and I have seen it work time and time again.

Maybe we can build a Team North America that — together — is working on bigger, far more serious and looming issues on how to:

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– develop a continental security system of shared energy and responsible water management;
– develop a mutual, lower cost and more energy efficient effort as a Team North America that leads to a more competitive and safer artificial intelligence-based economy;
– develop an integrated approach to our collective cybersecurity, and that can jointly defend against any future cyber attack on our most critical infrastructure and utilities;
– establish an integrated North American response to both emergencies and adaptations from the looming climate crisis that will be severely disrupting us with increasing frequency (like those recent fires in L.A.);
– plan farther in advance for an inevitable tsunami of hundreds of millions of climate crisis refugees, all being displaced from new tipping points and the sudden loss of arable lands around the globe.

Considering all these consequential issues, the current tariff war seems like such a waste of precious time. It is so mercantilist and 19th century. We are solving problems with grade school arithmetic when we should be looking for ways to make one plus one equal five.

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It is a job for serious and creative leaders and not for celebrity performers (and their sycophants) who fail to comprehend these much bigger, wicked problems of the 21st century.

There should also be a Plan C, which is not mutually exclusive and should be advanced as soon as possible. With an unreliable and erratic America (likely to last well beyond Trump for decades to come), we need to pursue many other diverse markets and more stable alliances ASAP.

We should expedite a Canadian application to join the European Union. We should explore a rejuvenated Asia Pacific Partnership, without the isolationist USA. We should also knock on the doors of ASEAN and Mercosur.

And, of course, we are long overdue to have freer trade within our own country — and finally — remove all that damaging inter-provincial turf protection.

It’s time for Canada to grow up, and not to be defined or constricted by our attic bedroom right above that rowdy U.S. house. We urgently need to venture out into the wider global neighbourhood, especially as those tenants below us are getting increasingly arrogant, uninformed, unstable and aggressive.

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Dale Botting is a former Saskatchewan deputy minister and founder and president of the Saskatoon-based Global Alliance for Professional Leadership Development.

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