David Moskrop
speaker
28 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
David Moskrop’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Born in Peterborough, Ontario, and spent most of my young life in central Ontario. Although, incidentally, my late father was American, in case anyone is wondering if I might be a sleeper agent. I'm not, but I want to just get that out at the top, just in case.
Here, nobody really took it as a joke. It was at best an insult and at worst a credible threat. And I think for a lot of people, the calculus was, okay, well, this might not happen. It probably won't happen in the sense that we're going to get invaded, troops going over the border. But when the hegemon and your neighbor along the world's longest undefended border, at least for now...
starts talking about annexation, you think, okay, maybe this is something we should take seriously, you know, just in case. And of course, that accompanied real economic threats that we started to feel immediately. And so that was a real one-two punch that hit.
And in the meantime, there were some Americans, including people like Steve Bannon, saying China and Russia, the great powers and the United States.
It's like, OK, well, then we're listening.
Well, yes and no. No, we didn't send troops to the border to go defend because that would be an exercise in futility. We don't have that many troops to begin with. It's a huge problem. Yeah, they're stretched a little thin as it is. It's a long border.
But incidentally, as it happens, as Trump started in the early days said, well, you know, we're going to hit Canada with tariffs because of fentanyl and because of a lax border.
The government, at the time, Justin Trudeau said, OK, well, we're going to start patrolling the border with Blackhawk helicopters. We're going to send drones. We're going to declare drug cartels terrorists.
Incidentally, it turns out that border apprehensions, according to the White House, are down, but as you can imagine, tariffs are not.
The cultural reaction has been fascinating because at no time in my life, I'm a spry 41 and a half, but at no time in my life have I seen this sort of surge of nationalism that's been so widespread and sustained, at least so far, and rapid. And it's manifested itself in all kinds of ways. We saw the booing of the Star Spangled Banner at sports events.
Yeah, there was a kind of hedging on that.
We pulled booze off the shelves from the United States. A handful of provinces here, including mine in Ontario and British Columbia, straight up said, OK, the state liquor distributor and retailer is simply not going to carry alcohol. And since then, it's only been Canadian spirits and beer. There was a return of the I Am Canadian, this iconic I Am Canadian beer commercial from the early 2000s.
Hey.
Jeff Douglas talking about these stereotypical Canadian things, you know, as a flag waved on the screen in the background.
You go to grocery stores and you see American products sitting there on the shelves while Canadian products are empty. And even I was part of this. I went to the grocery store one day and I wanted to make poutine because I guess I felt like being a stereotype. which is something you shouldn't do every day because it's heavy. Especially as you've got to get to your 40s.
Yeah, once you get into your spry early 40s, don't eat poutine every day. I'm not that kind of doctor, but I think that's solid advice. And I went in and I picked up a can of gravy and I get to the cache and I look at it and it's called Americano. I'm like, I should have noticed this earlier. So I go back down, I haul my butt back down the aisle and I went and I checked the label to be sure.
And sure enough, it comes from the United States. I put it back on the shelf and I got a different gravy. I walked back and paid for it and left the store.
Which they have. They're not traveling to the United States either. Bookings are way down. Border crossings, both for Canadians and Americans, are way down. And this is, you know, two deeply integrated economies, both economically and culturally. A trade relationship worth a trillion dollars a year. 75% of Canadian exports go stateside.
And people all of a sudden say, no, it's both an economic and cultural imperative that I start to push back against this. And it came out of nowhere because, you know, prior to Trump trash-talking Canada, threatening Canada, and levying tariffs, this wasn't really on the radar.
That's right. This has become both a rallying cry and a meme and a little bit cringe in Canada. It was a genuine moment that's also been appropriated by politicians. Elbows up!
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