ArcaMax

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Just hours before Canada’s federal election, a man treated a street festival here in Vancouver like it was a bowling lane and his vehicle was the ball. Eleven people have died as a result, with several others injured. But sure, let’s make the federal election all about U.S. President Donald Trump.

Local police quickly ruled out terrorism. How could they possibly know so fast? Well, because they were apparently like, “Oh, it was just THAT guy.” And not because he hangs out at the doughnut shop with them and shoots the breeze, but because he’s out there doing enough criming that they know his exact brand of crime – and it isn’t terrorism.

Just days earlier, a young woman visiting Vancouver from Toronto was attacked and emerged with a broken nose and other injuries after a violent encounter with another perpetrator in a highly touristic area.

This offender, in his 30s, was also “known to police.” How did they know Peterhans Jalo Nungu, now charged with assault causing bodily harm? Turns out that just two days earlier, he was let out on bail for attacking a cop who had been called by Nungu’s own family to deal with his meltdown, as his mother explained to the local press.

After the second attack, he was let out on bail yet again and ordered to stay at the home of his mother. Oh, does he have another mother who wouldn’t have to call the cops so he could beat them up after she failed to control him? Nope, same mother, in case you’re wondering.

“Known to police” used to mean something quite different. These days, it’s just another way to say that the cops are able to greet you by name amid your crime spree because you’re a frequent customer. Only instead of the cops punching your loyalty card, you punch them.

These aren’t isolated incidents. Petty crime, random attacks and public disorder are commonplace. One trip to downtown Vancouver will set off the self-preservation radar of anyone whose survival instincts haven’t been numbed as a result of being lobotomized by leftist political correctness.

It’s not like crime isn’t a major systemic problem, particularly here on the West Coast. And that’s hardly a surprise, given that the federal Liberal government has done just about everything possible to enable it.

Take the Liberals’ solution to the drug problem. “Safer supply refers to providing prescribed medications as a safer alternative to the toxic illegal drug supply to people who are at high risk of overdose,” according to the government’s website. “Safer supply” means that instead of the drugs from dealers, the government becomes your dealer, offering “flexible dosing” and “flexible goals” that include “not requiring that clients stop using illegal drugs.”

They’ll even offer “supportive housing” and “supervised consumption sites,” so no one bothers you while you get jacked up on government junk courtesy of some of the taxpayers whose cars you’ll likely be breaking into later while they’re hard at work downtown to help pay for the privilege.

Meanwhile, Liberal immigration policies naively view every immigrant coming into Canada from abroad as a potential victim of oppression who just wants to contribute to their multicolored rainbow vision of the country. It clearly hasn’t occurred to them that some individuals may have been oppressed back home because they were criminals there, too. Just because prison is oppressive doesn’t necessarily mean the country doing the jailing is wrong. But Canada’s Liberals seem determined to find that out the hard way.

Issues like these – crime, drugs, immigration chaos – should have dominated the Canadian election. But they didn’t. Instead, the top issue was overwhelmingly Canada’s relationship with the U.S. under Trump. Half of voters say it’s a top issue, according to a YouGov poll.

Why? Because Trump keeps riffing about Canada becoming the 51st state and about tariffs. Suddenly, it was like a bunch of Canadians were smacked upside the head, got a case of collective amnesia and forgot all about the economic devastation that long predates Trump’s second term, and which the Liberal government has overseen, with Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney having even served as an economic adviser to his predecessor Justin Trudeau. Oh, but he’s a banker, so he has all the solutions. And everyone knows that banker by trade means genius by default. Which is why his solution to the national deficit is to make Trudeau’s look like Monopoly money at $21 billion a year higher.

It’s not like these voters clinging to the Liberal Party can actually tell you how they’ve personally been harmed economically by any Trump “tariffs.” Or how Trump and not the Liberals crashed the Canadian economy. Or how they somehow figure that Team Trudeau merely rebranded as Team Carney will be any better for Canada’s positioning vis-à-vis the U.S. than a complete deep-state cleanse that would replace Liberal cronies with independent-minded Conservatives offering a fresh perspective and approach.

Instead, they’re just wetting themselves over Trump’s annexation talk. Clearly, they know as much about the realities of an army holding a territory the size of the entire contiguous United States and Mexico combined as they do about economics. Relax, guys. The Afghans didn’t even have hockey sticks, just flip-flops, and still ultimately couldn’t be contained.

Meanwhile, Canadians can’t even leave anything visible in their car during a trip to the local mall for fear of a smash-and-grab. But maybe they’ll just find a way to blame that on Trump, too. Because when reality is too uncomfortable to face, apparently it’s easier to just blame an outsider while desperately clinging to the same folks responsible for the mess in the first place.