Canadian city takes a big swipe at Trump

President Donald Trump's trade and rhetoric wars with Canada are as controversial in the United States as in the targeted country, but a recent report reveals that Canadians are particularly angry at America — and that Canada's capital city is demonstrating this through a potent symbolic gesture.

"A street in Canada’s capital bearing the name of the current U.S. president will be renamed," reported Ted Raymond from CTV News on Wednesday. "Ottawa city council unanimously agreed to a motion to begin the process of renaming Trump Avenue, in Ottawa’s Central Park neighbourhood."

Raymond added, "Trump Avenue is one of several streets in Central Park that references New York City. Other street names include Madison Park, Manhattan Crescent, Bloomingdale Street, and Staten Street. At the time of the neighbourhood’s development, Trump was a famous real estate mogul, but his tumultuous time as president of the United States has led to renewed calls to take his name off street signs in the capital."

In a speech to Ottawan councilors on Wednesday, River Ward Coun. Riley Brockington explained that “as you may appreciate, since I came to office, there have been a number of requests from Trump Avenue residents, residents within Central Park and across our city, and frankly beyond, that would like to see the City of Ottawa engage in a street renaming process."

Brockington added, “I could speak at great length why I believe strongly it is time to rename Trump Avenue, but I don’t want to give a platform anymore to the person who is on the current street sign blades. I do believe this is about a new beginning, and I want this to be a community-led process where the community ultimately will select and recommend to city council what that new name will be.”

Speaking with AlterNet earlier in September, Dr. Ed Gresser, a trade expert at the Progressive Policy Institute, explained the broader Canadian economic strategy in response to Trump's tariff wars.

"The Canadian government retaliated with its own set of tariffs, and I think that is sort of what is really the animating thing for the Trump administration and for Trump personally — that only, in its year and a half of trying to impose tariffs on everyone, only China and Canada have really retaliated with their own tariffs on American things," Gresser told AlterNet. "And China has sort of wrestled the administration to a draw more or less. Canada's smaller, more dependent on the United States, and it may be that the administration generally feels they need to retaliate — they need to treat this very seriously, to avoid the potential that other countries might adopt Canada's approach and get back when the administration kind of hits them. I think they would be quite alarmed about that, and so they want to kind of make an example."

He added, "And probably Trump personally is — and he seems to have some real animus against Canada for reasons I don't understand. And that goes well beyond tariffs, although tariffs are kind of the main policy thing, but he's always sort of belittling Canada and calling it the 51st state and things like that. And it's just very — there must be — there seems to be something really personal involved in this, which I don't feel I have any insight into. It's just, it's weird."

Also speaking with AlterNet in September, Dr. Richard D. Wolff — professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst – explained why Canada is so angry at the United States.

"Our government is busy strong-arming people around the world in every way that it can, militarily, economically, politically, and discovering time after time to their amazement, if you take them seriously, that the folks are going to resist," Wolff told AlterNet. "And that's what's going to happen."