Justin Trudeau Is Very Sad That United States Doesn’t Pay Attention to Canada

If you were watching the Republican debate last night, the realization that one of the four men onstage might end up being the leader of the free world might understandably have filled you with a pending sense of doom.

Obviously, it will be remembered for Donald Trump talking about his yuge dick only seven minutes into a debate, a bar that only vintage Rob Ford could pass under.

Right on cue though, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is weighing in to give our neighbours to the south some sound advice.

Trudeau, asked about Canada's qualms with the US in soon-to-be-aired 60 Minutes interview, replied, "it might be nice if they paid a little more attention to the world." And by world, he meant: us hosers.

According to the Associated Press, Trudeau, playing the role of the neglected younger sibling, pointed out Canadians "must be aware of at least one other country, the United States, because of its importance."

"I think we sometimes like to think that, you know, Americans will pay attention to us from time to time, too."

Thing is, Americans do pay attention to the rest of the world. They pay quite a lot of attention in fact. And you know what sometimes happens when America "pays attention" to a country? They spend trillions of dollars bombing it. And then they never leave.

According to this handy Time magazine infographic, there are 1.3 million US military personnel currently stationed in 150 countries around the world.

Japan—a country the US hasn't been at war with since 1945—still has almost 50,000 American military personnel stationed there; Germany isn't too far behind with 37,000.

During the foreign policy segment of last night's debate, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who has previously said he wants foot soldiers in Iraq and Syria, was questioned on the increasing ISIS presence in Libya. Would he send troops there too, he was asked? His answer was more or less, why the hell not?

"[ISIS] need to be targeted wherever they have an operating space," Rubio said, advocating for American special operators and air strikes. Added Ohio Governor John Kasich, "We have to be there on the ground in significant numbers… And we have to be in the air."

Meanwhile, Donald Trump, championed waterboarding and "stronger" methods of torture—an idea that received loud cheers.

"Can you imagine these people, these animals, over in the Middle East that chop off heads, sitting around talking and seeing that we're having a hard problem with waterboarding? We should go for waterboarding and we should go tougher than waterboarding."

He also said he had "no problem" with the US torturing and killing the families of terrorists, known, in layman's terms, as murder.

(It being Trump, however, he completely changed his stance Friday, realizing even a US president should pretend to respect international law.)

Trudeau isn't wrong—Canadians know far more about America than they do about us. It's the largest superpower in the world and we barely qualify as a middle power. And let's face it, 99 percent of our pop culture references come from there (the other one percent being Drake or The Tragically Hip depending on your age and some combination of Kids in the Hall reruns and the Trailer Park Boys. That's about it.)

But really, America's ignorance of Canada (also known as not having a good reason to pay attention to us) is a good thing. When the US does notice Canada it's usually because our border is being blamed for letting 9/11 terrorists pass over it (which never happened), we are being asked to invade somewhere, or they're petitioning to send Justin Bieber back here.

This presidential election campaign has already seen one American politician suggest building a wall across the Canada-US border, so it's not as if they are entirely ignoring us.

We'll find out the rest of what Trudeau has to tell America on Sunday (something about Keystone and the environment and hair gel, likely) but for now it seems quite fitting that our national spokesperson has voiced our tremendous inferiority complex. Not that anyone in the US noticed.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.