When ‘No’ Means ‘No’: Selling Public Lands or Taking Over Canada

Every kid has heard “No means no!” when they want something their parents don’t think they should have. This week that phrase got a couple high profile uses when Canada’s new Prime Minister, Mark Carney, told Donald Trump right to his face that Canada was not and never would be for sale and Montana’s Congressman Ryan Zinke forcefully said “no” to the sale of public lands in the West.

In this day and age seeing U.S. politicians keep their campaign promises — or honor their oaths of office — is becoming increasingly rare.  But on “keeping public lands in public hands,” Rep. Zinke did just that.

The measure in question was part of the “big, beautiful bill” touted by Trump to give yet more tax breaks to the already wealthy. The new twist was to sell hundreds of thousands of acres of federal lands in Nevada and Utah for mining, logging, drilling and development to finance those tax breaks.

Doug Burgum, the Secretary of the Interior, has publicly declared public lands and resources as “natural assets” that can be used to pay down the national debt. Consequently, GOP Reps. Mark Amodei of Nevada and Celeste Maloy of Utah inserted the public land sale as an amendment since it was not contained in the original draft of the bill due to bipartisan opposition.

Montana’s Congressman and former Secretary of the Interior called the move to sell public lands “a red line” and was adamant: “It’s a no now. It will be a no later. It will be a no forever.’’   As Zinke explained his firm opposition: “I prefer the management scheme and I give as an example a hotel. If you don’t like the management of a hotel, don’t sell the hotel; change the management.”

At almost the same time, Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney was using almost the same words in his White House meeting. After listening to Trump’s blather about how Canada should be our 51st state, how much he “loved Canada” and how erasing the “artificial” border line would make one beautiful piece of real estate, Carney used Trump’s own real estate line to fire back: “As you know from real estate, there are some places that are never for sale.  We’re sitting in one right now.  Having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign the last several months, it’s not for sale, won’t be for sale,” adding: “Canada’s not for sale. It never will be for sale.”

Carney won office largely on his opposition to Trump’s intentions to take over Canada,saying during the election that: “America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. But these are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never ever happen.”

Both Zinke and Carney are dead right.  Polls show 74% of Americans oppose the sale of our public lands — and Carney’s election speaks for itself.  He won by fighting Trump’s nasty threat to take over our northern neighbor that 77% of Canadians oppose.

For a guy who’s always been told he can have everything he wants, the double-barrel blast should be a wake up call.  The world is not one big real estate sale to be marketed solely to make greedy billionaires even more money.  Kudos to Zinke and Carney — and hopefully a sign to the rest of Congress and the world that it’s time to tell our spoiled child of a president “No means no!”