O Canada

“Since we’re talking about this free trade agreement, there’s one line I’d like to change…” says an unnamed American ambassador. “Which line is that?” asks his Canadian counterpart, bewildered. “This one here, it’s just getting in the way,” replies the American, taking an eraser to the US/Canadian border on a map of North America. This Liberal Party ad from the 1988 federal election cast the stakes of then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s negotiation of NAFTA with the US in existential terms, as a threat to the country’s sovereignty. “Just how much are we giving away in the Mulroney free trade deal?” intones the narrator, “Our water? Our healthcare? Our culture? … This is more than an election, it’s your future.”

Thirty-seven years later, one finds it bitterly ironic that it is the dissolution of NAFTA and its Trump-negotiated successor, along with the return of tariffs that is actually threatening to erase the border between the US and Canada now. For all the paroxysms about free trade, it seems too few people on either side of the world’s longest peaceful border reckoned with the prospect of an American President sketching a simulacrum of 19^th Century imperialist politics with crayon on the back of a napkin and substituting that for decades of diplomacy and alliance. Yet here we are.

In some American newspapers, there’s been a trend of Americans apologizing to our Canadian neighbors for the petty cruelty of Trump’s trade war and spiteful insults. I share the sentiment, yet I also acknowledge that such apologies—often failing to meaningfully engage with Canada’s own history or politics—are worth less than the pennies the Royal Canadian Mint no longer produces. Instead, I’d like to use that 1988 ad as a point of departure to argue that Canada has a distinct identity worth fighting for, by any means necessary, and that the nation may hold one of the keys to ensuring the whole democratic world rises from the other side of today’s darkness. 

For all the well-meaning stereotypes about Canadian Nice, so beloved of American liberals, the truth of the country is one of a flawed, disputatious pluralistic work-in-progress that has an opportunity to emerge from Trump’s warmongering as a beacon for the democratic world.

Some American commentators, especially conservatives, have asserted that Canada lacks a national vision or identity, with some leaping on Justin Trudeau’s clumsy 2015 claim that ‘‘there is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada.” While Trudeau the Younger meant this to be a good thing—he was referring to the fundamental truth that it is possible for “people of all faiths and origins” to be Canadian—it’s undeniable that he lacks the effortless intellectualism his father brought to such questions, instead stumbling into the trap laid by reactionaries who would use multiculturalism and modernity as proof of national weakness.

But to look at the raucous trend of crowded hockey stadiums singing O’ Canada so loudly as to drown out professional singers on mics, one does wonder if perhaps people like Ross Douthat were wrong to write off the sense of unmistakable flag waving and fellow-feeling in the True North. The more interesting question is how it should be channeled now; a little history provides a worthy answer.

Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada for over 15 years, was not opposed to nations or even national identity; a Quebecois man who believed passionately in Canadian federalism, he was a determined opponent of separatism, and yet he, more than any elected official in Canadian history, was responsible for instituting the national bilingualism that has come to define (yes, we can say it) the country’s identity. Even the most ignorant American probably knows French is an official language in Canada, after all. 

“By the terms of the existing Canadian Constitution,” Trudeau wrote in French in an essay for Cité Libre, “French Canadians have all the powers they need to make Quebec a political society affording due respect for nationalist aspirations and at the same time giving unprecedented scope for human potential …” 

Nationalism was dangerous, but it could be channeled within a democratic political framework that permitted recognition and flourishing. The next paragraph, worth quoting in full, reads almost like a prophecy now: 

If Quebec were to become such a shining example … French Canadians would no longer need to do battle for bilingualism; the ability to speak French could become a status symbol, even an ‘open sesame’ in business and public life. Even in Ottawa, superior competence on the part of our politicians and civil servants would bring spectacular changes.

Now, more than half a century on from 1962, when he penned those words, Canada looks a lot like what Trudeau and millions of Canadians envisaged. It is now almost unthinkable for Canada to have a prime minister who doesn’t speak French, after all. 

If Canada has a national character—and I sincerely believe it does—then it was forged in the solar heat of the postwar era: the Quiet Revolution in Quebec and the wider liberalisation of the 1960s of which Pierre Trudeau was a part; the Pearson Government and the development of modern nationalised healthcare; the growth of indigenous activism and identity; the repatriation of the Canadian constitution and the drafting of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms; the battles over Quebec sovereignty, first played out with bombs and bullets and later with ballots and debates; the revolts of Western Canada and the assertion of a new conservatism out in the Prairies. 

These were ructions that played out in the lifetimes of most of us. The American liberal stereotype of Canada as progressive, multicultural, bilingual, and internationalist is—to the extent that it’s true, and doesn’t gloss over Canada’s deeply ugly history—the result of a very recent reforging of what it means to be Canadian. Even the nation’s iconic Maple Leaf pennant is younger than the oldest Gen-Xers. 

There’s much here that’s worth defending, and that flag can be a standard to which the democratic world repairs in uncertain times. After all, Trudeau the Elder’s model for a modern state was not quite “post-national,” but something else entirely.

In the 1980 Quebec sovereignty referendum campaign, Pierre Elliott Trudeau articulated a vision for what he was fighting for and why he was calling on Quebecois to vote “Non” on the idea of independence. Not because of the inherent virtue of this thing called Canada, necessarily, nor a mindless wrapping of oneself in the flag, but a broader, liberal internationalist vision:

When the whole world is interdependent, when Europe is trying to seek some kind of political union, these people [separatists]… want to split it up? They want to take it away from their children? They want to break it down? No! That’s our answer.

“These people” are now firmly south of the border, in the White House. That emerging internationalist order of supranational alliances and economic unions is something Trump deeply despises; his onanistic nightmares of unchecked American imperial power, defined simply by planting meaningless flags on every spit of land he can point to on a map are the antithesis of everything Pierre Elliott Trudeau was arguing for.

And it’s worth recommitting to that Maple Leaf spirit now as Canada faces an existential crisis. It’s impossible to say whether Trump will actually be able to somehow annex Canada, but it’s a threat that should be treated with the utmost gravity. Regardless of his actual capacity to achieve it, he wants to be the man to erase the 49^th Parallel border. That alone merits a robust response, if only for the sake of Canadians who have an inalienable right under the UN Charter to decide their own destiny.

There’s work to do. A recent trip by Canadian premiers to DC is already coming under fire for its evident supplication to Trump, predictably ending in their humiliation as they didn’t even get to meet the man himself and had the “51^st state” threat thrown back at them. 

On the flagship public news broadcast, the National, the usually sober At Issue panel was forced into uncharted waters as they grappled with what this meant. Veteran political journalist Chantal Hébert—never one given to grandiose statements or chest-beating—said something remarkable:

I don’t believe that you get anywhere without inflicting pain on the other side at this point. Diplomacy isn’t cutting it. … It is time to tell the truth; you’re not going to mitigate the pain. Stop going to Washington, save money on plane tickets, and start thinking about what point the American system, the pain that it causes them … is a problem [for them]. Because a 50% tariff on aluminium is going to cause a fair amount of pain in the US.

Echoing her, the Toronto Star’s Althia Raj said, “we do need to think about a smarter strategy that shows strength,” and the Globe and Mail’s Andrew Coyne argued that a spirit of national sacrifice was needed to keep Canada in the fight for the “long-haul” of “at least the next four years.”

This is all to the good, and I will not join those left-of-centre Americans grousing about how this attitude might hurt the US working class and pleading for mercy. The At Issue panel is fundamentally correct. If Canada is worth keeping independent, then it must take a strong line. Even if that means symbolically abandoning elements of diplomacy. I also firmly believe that most Americans don’t realise what’s been unleashed north of the border here—while the anti-Canadian tariffs are just another Tuesday in the ceaseless carnival of bigotry and madness that is the second Trump Administration, in Canada it’s completely upended politics and entirely dominated the national conversation, awakening old passions and eroding old certainties.

The gaggle of premiers who went to Washington are, perhaps, belatedly coming to realise that there is no way out but through. As an American, let me say this: there is no sucking up to Donald Trump that does not end in humiliation. Canada must fight, and it must, in Hébert’s words, “inflict pain” on the American economy. But, to what end beyond survival? What is Canada surviving for? Let’s talk a bit about how much the trade war has changed politics in Ottawa already.

Justin Trudeau has long walked in his father’s shadow and bears the richly deserved curse of any political scion: to be compared unfavourably with the parent who made his name famous. He has become so politically toxic that members of his own Liberal Party were racing to distance themselves from him after nearly a decade in power. This climate, in turn, forced him to step down. He is now presiding as a caretaker PM while his party embarks on a leadership race to select a replacement. Meanwhile, the opposition conservatives, led by the firebrand provocateur Pierre Poilievre, are in their most far-right guise ever. 

Poilievre cleaved close to the violent and bigoted trucker protests in Canada two years ago, ostensibly against vaccine mandates for truckers crossing the border, but which metastasised into a familiar kind of far-right grievance festival against all things liberal. That has become Poilievre’s base, and his Conservative Party has been deliberately taking a leaf out of the Trump playbook—to the point where some of his supporters have been dubbed “Maple MAGA.”

Alarmingly and yet unsurprisingly given the poor timing (the pendulum was naturally swinging against a Liberal Party that’s been in power in Ottawa since 2015), Poilievre’s CPC was up by as much as 20 points consistently in polling. 

Since the trade war erupted, that’s all changed. The threat of annexation has focused minds, and suddenly Poilievre’s culture war-driven campaign—including a viciously anti-trans streak—has run aground. The Liberals are gaining ground fast. 

Justin Trudeau truly found his moment amidst the trade war, giving a well-regarded speech, summoning all the majesty of his office to articulate both a clear, defiant message on behalf of Canadians, and a message to Americans that sought to preserve the bonds of friendship that have long prevailed between our two countries. Suddenly there were people wondering if he’d resigned too early. And now, one of his possible successors, the former Governor of the Bank of Canada, Mark Carney (who steered Canada through the 2008 Financial Crisis) is polling even with Poilievre’s Conservatives.

In the defence of Canadian sovereignty, there is an opportunity to repudiate Poilievre’s politics as a cold caught from a Trumpian sneeze. But, more than that, there’s also an opportunity to consider radical changes that would build resilience over the next four years.

Yes, it’s time to consider Canada joining the EU. Even if it weren’t an official member, deepening ties could allow for the creation of an economic arsenal of democracy that would serve to preserve pluralism against Trump’s malevolence. While economic measures against the US should be as severe as possible, this should not translate into the kind of xenophobia we saw during COVID—where dual citizens, Canadians who worked across the border, and even Canadian citizens whose cars had American plates found themselves attacked as pestilent outsiders. 

There should always be an open hand to the many millions who’ve built a life on both sides of the border, to ensure that dream does not die, and to keep Canada in touch with what is best about itself: its ability to connect across boundaries.

Canada and the First Nations that have been there since long before Confederation have often turned first to democracy, however flawed, as a means of advancing political visions. At the height of the bitter 1995 sovereignty referendum in Quebec, the Cree nation held its own referendum on the matter, reaching 4,915 Cree, including some in the remote wilderness; 96.3% voted to stay within Canada, regardless of the Quebec referendum result. This was not a ringing endorsement of Canada, nor of federalism, but an assertion by the Cree that only they could decide their political destiny, and with whom they would negotiate for their own sovereignty. This, too, points the way towards a renewed form of federalism—nations working together under an EU-style banner that preserves national distinctions and sovereignty.

It’s all part of an unfinished project, as Thomas King observes in The Inconvenient Indian when he describes how the Nunavut territory has underperformed expectations as a means helping Inuit thrive and Inuktitut flourish into new generations. As the Arctic warms and comes under renewed imperial threat from the US, Russia, and even China, the opportunity for productive alliances between indigenous peoples of the North abounds. Much as King praises the way an Inuit-majority government has demonstrated considerable “commitment” in trying to use its 25-year-old powers to redress historical wrongs, each passing year that those wrongs go unresolved, “invites consequences over which the Inuit may have little control.” Now, with climate change and Trump, the consequences are here. The time for leveraging federalism and internationalism to forge new relationships, both within Canada and abroad, is now. At the other end of this omnicrisis, new, more equitable and just political alliances could emerge.

It is, whether Canadians realise it or not, that spirit and that possibility that is under immediate threat from various strains of Trumpism—both in Washington and in Ottawa. It must be defended.

In 1980, when Pierre Elliott Trudeau said that “Canada is more than just the sum of its parts; more than the sum of ten provinces,” he was arguing, yes, for a strong central government. But to do what? His answer was the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That is what a nation is for, what all the flags were for, what a sense of “identity” is for. The nation, not as a shibboleth at which to worship one’s own vanity, but as a guardian of common interests and values; a protector; a fountain of recognition. In this, there is an opportunity for Canada’s proud self-defence to enable it to emerge as a beacon for the free world, an economic and ideological arsenal of democracy to stand athwart the darkness. 

To get there, needs to be ruthless in its dealings with the US’s much-degraded government, and it needs to forge a new Atlanticism, both within the existing frameworks of NATO and the EU (including fully implementing its 2017 free trade agreement with Europe), but also imaginatively with new geopolitical formations—including Indigenous ones. That presents a hopeful future.

That is what is at stake today; for all the delusion of Trump’s “51^st state” fantasy, it’s not hard to imagine what he envisions for Canada. Look at what he’s doing to us.