Chris Christie, John Manley, Martha Lou Findlay and Conrad Black debate the opportunities to be afforded by another possible Trump presidency

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The C.D. Howe Institute has invited me to use this column to summarize the Regent Debate that the institute held in Toronto on Sept. 24. It was a well-attended and rollicking affair with a learned audience of several hundred or more people. The former governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, and I defended the motion that the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States would be an opportunity for Canada. Our very worthy opponents were the former minister of finance John Manley, and the former Liberal politician and chair of the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, Martha Hall Findlay. It is well-known that after Christie described president Trump as “Donald Duck” during one of the Republican candidates’ debates (which Trump ignored and dismissed as “an audition for vice-president”), their relations are unlikely to resume anytime soon.

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The former governor went to some lengths to explain that the lack of rapport between him and Trump should be taken as a reinforcement of his faith that Trump’s policies do justify optimism in Canada about a returned Trump administration. The three Canadian participants all stated or hinted that this country’s first requirement for economic progress is better policy-making in Ottawa, whoever may inhabit the White House for the next four years. All four participants spoke in sequence with the order reversed in mid-debate and for a fixed time. There were no interruptions and the judicious debate chairman, Bill Robson, head of the C.D. Howe Institute, closed microphones if the speaker went more than 10 or 15 seconds beyond the allotted time. The Canadian participants had all known each other for some years and the atmosphere was entirely........

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