Rory and his squeeze moved to St. Davids two years ago. Everything was cool until I started writing this column.

“When I saw you were now doing a weekly comment,” he wrote me a few days ago, “I said to my wife, oh no, Turner’s back.”

Apparently Rory, who is of the conservative persuasion, remembers me as a Harper-era MP who was ejected from caucus for transgressions I recently recounted. (Blogging about stuff and opposing 0 per cent down, 40-year mortgages.)

My failure here in the pages of The Lake Report?

“You fit right into the mould of most Canadian reporters, total focus on the U.S. totally ignoring the massive incompetence we have going on in Ottawa with our three want-to-be leaders. Trudeau, Freeland and Singh,” he says.

“I really don’t want our local paper to become a media outlet for the Liberals. You can quit anytime as far as I’m concerned. I used to enjoy picking up our paper.”

So there. Despite having been elected as a Con and even running to be leader of the Progressive Conservative party (remember them?) I’m now a lefty schmuck. And that comes from a column published here detailing what might happen to Canada if Donald Trump were elected.

(To refresh your memory, this includes a trade war and corporate tax cuts leading to higher stocks, more inflation and fatter interest rates, say economists. The deficit and debt would jump and deporting 10 million people would rattle labour markets. A leading bank economist says all this would push Canada into recession and raise our interest rates by almost 2 percentage points. Ouch. Imagine what mortgages at 7 per cent would do.)

Well, lots has changed in the past couple of weeks. Biden’s toast. Harris is ascendant. The election is a horse race. So what would a Kamala victory mean for we little beavers on this side of the river?

Rory will be happy. It’s not all good.

“She is no moderate,” says Scotiabank’s chief economist Derek Holt, a man I have respected for decades.

“She has been a highly divisive voice with natural tendencies aligned toward the far left end of the Democrats.”

Whazzat mean? 

Free trade with us could be impacted since Harris opposed the current deal as being too weak on the environment.

“Her stance could well make her no friend to Canada,” Holt says. She would reverse the Trump-era corporate tax cut, which would certainly whack stock markets for a while.

She’d increase taxes on the wealthy, regulate AI and start taxing financial transactions. Plus a lot more social spending, including a Canadian-style health-for-all plan.

This stuff curls the toes of Trumpers. Economically, it also suggests inflation and higher rates may return.

America is already staggering under almost $35 trillion in debt. And remember that our Bank of Canada follows the Fed 93 per cent of the time. Rates zip higher there, they swell here, too.

OK, now what about Rory’s charge of obsessing on the U.S. and letting the bums in Ottawa go uncriticized?

First, we don’t have an election. They do.

Second, what happens there ends up happening here.

Third, it’s not the media’s job to pick sides.

Fourth, flushing out the government in Canada actually doesn’t change the fact houses cost too much or 8,000 people in NOTL have no doctor and the fine woman on Queen Street who gives Cody treats every morning was told to wait a year for a simple MRI.

Dividing the world into left and right, as the Americans are doing (and we’re following) solves nothing. One side is not right and good, the other wrong and evil. Trust me. I’ve been on both. 

And that’s why Rory hates me. Tough.