Nat the beginning of seven months After an election that returned a minority Parliament and a Liberal Party-led government with Prime Minister Mark Carney at the helm, Canadians would be forgiven for asking what they should do with their elbows.
Liberals leaned on nationalism during the election, taking a defiant stance in the face of tariffs and threats to sovereignty from US President Donald Trump. Carney never promised to solve all the problems on day one, nor did he promise to completely appease Trump, whom he called both “transformational,” with all the ambiguity that comes with that word, and uncontrollable.
Carney knew he could not control Trump, only Canada's response, which would entail foreign trade diversification and domestic nation-building through infrastructure projects and domestic trade. This was a completely reasonable approach, which has already led to long-awaited strategic steps. For example, the government hopes to reset its trade relationship with China and build deeper relationships with other countries in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe.
But resistance to Washington has so far meant, for the most part, concession. Following Trump's talk of making Canada the “cherished” fifty-first state, the Liberal governments under Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney fallen retaliatory tariffs against the US, abandoned digital services tax, hated by both Republican and Democratic administrations, seeking to increase military spending at America's behest (including perhaps We stick to American-made F-35 fightersand the HIMARS missile system), were discussed accession America-led missile defense scheme, border securitization in response to Trump administration false claims about fentanyl smuggling, and US oil company permitting make record profits from Canadian resources.
If that seems like a lot, there's more to it. Canada has thoughtful allowing Americans to access the sacred cow of the Canadian dairy market, and this summer oversaw the Canadian investment spree spending on state capital markets, including a lot of money flowing south from the Canada Pension Plan. Now we find out that Carney apologized for a television ad placed by Ontario Premier Doug Ford that aired on U.S. networks that used former President Ronald Reagan to attack Republican tariffs in Canada.
We need to know who we are trying to reassure. The Trump administration is conducting anti-immigrant raids and removing citizens and non-citizens from its streets, committing air strikes against Venezuela, rejects boundaries of the rules of engagement for its armed forces, extorts trading partners, finances its armed forces during the government shutdown using private donations, starving his people, adjusts himself potentially interfere in elections, prosecutes his political enemies and threatens professor.
However, despite all this, Ottawa's response was capitulation. Compromises, poses, and maneuvers—whatever you want to call them—have yet to yield much of a return. Even though the government boasts of having the best deal with Trump, it also promising the bestbut doesn't deliver.
Canada was never going to leave the US overnight or all at once, and that was not Carney's promise. The US still accounts for the vast majority of Canada's trade, especially in exports and defence. But our defiant stance raises questions about how far we are willing to go to get along. America slides into autocracy and fascism while asserting imperial power in ways that James Monroe, the fifth president of the Republic, might have recognized as hemispheric dominance, the essence of the Monroe Doctrine.
Is the plan really to watch America simultaneously crumble and claim divine right, and continue to bargain with it, hat in hand?
The is working on the search A better trade deal with Trump is not inherently wrong, even if it may seem quixotic. Interaction, no matter how difficult, is better than the alternative. But even if the defense of “realpolitik” (a utilitarian bargain based on the ultimate well-being of Canadians) applies here, doing business with a country that is heading into the abyss comes at a cost.
Carney's problem is not so much that his government is attempting a conscious but limited separation from the United States, but that in doing so they have refused to confront the depravity of the White House and have abandoned anything resembling an assertion of domestic sovereignty or self-respect. In the latest test, the US ambassador to Canada said the government's purchase of a full complement of US-made F-35 fighter jets should be an integral part of resuming trade talks. In other words, he is extorting money from us.
Trump is the aggressor and the root of the problem, a mad king on the throne of an empire who can and will bully the world as long as he can get away with it, and perhaps a little longer. And yet the list of humiliations and humiliations of Canada is very long. Canada might also consider the long-term consequences of relying on American missile defense and fighter aircraft, or even the defense umbrella itself. At the very least, we need to have a serious national discussion about what the current path entails if there is any unspoken assumption or hope that the US will eventually stabilize after Trump leaves.
There is no guarantee that this will happen. Once democratic institutions begin to crumble, they are difficult to restore, no matter who wins. And as for the winners, even if Republicans face big margins in the midterm elections, by the time the next presidential election rolls around, Vice President J.D. Vance or another MAGA devotee may have as good a chance of winning the White House as anyone else. It could happen. Trump himself has been written off more than once.
Beyond consistency and self-respect, there is the negotiation strategy itself. Whatever Canada is doing to get the deal done is not working, and there is no sign that it will work anytime soon, if ever. As mercurial and aggressive as Trump is, a strategy of endless concessions, even if based on a broader rescue-while-we-diversify scheme, may not help him. Sometimes you need to hit the bully right in the face and make sure he knows this is the end. Or you can walk away and accept the risks that come with it. At the very least, you need to stop handing over lunch money every time he asks, apologizing that you don't have any more with you. Canada has made moves before: Lester B. Pearson challenged Lyndon B. Johnson over the Vietnam War. Pierre Elliott Trudeau championed cultural and economic sovereignty during the Richard Nixon years. Jean Chretien missed the war in Iraq.
If Canada is truly a victim of geopolitical asymmetry and has no real leverage over the US, that's a different matter. If we know this, then you can be sure that the Americans know it too. Accepting this premise would be a sharp rebuke to Canada's national and provincial governments for decades, as well as to Canadian firms that took the less traveled path and aligned themselves entirely with the Yankees in trade and defense. Yes, it's much easier to travel from north to south via a bridge or neighborhood road, and who wouldn't take advantage of the protection of the biggest, baddest guy on the block? Convenience and necessity are explanations, not defenses. We made several calls. Now the cards are on the table and, oops, the risk may not have been wise.
To understand this mystery, we need to analyze the details. The government's strategy for long-term diversification should be welcomed, as well as maintaining a certain level of trade and barter with the Americans – without allowing them to completely collapse into something worse than what they are now. The United States is not just a federal government. Fifty states and millions and millions of people are opposing the Trump administration, many of whom are standing up to it and saying, “No, enough is enough.” Canada trades with people and their businesses, even if the states in which those people live and do business are not responsible for national tariffs.
Canada, however, must draw its own red lines and resolutely push back against American aggression, just as Carney sold us on last spring but never delivered. The new strategy for the coming decades requires domestic trust, infrastructure development and investment in the welfare state and economy; equally, he urges us to spread our bets and never, ever return to dependence on the American market at the expense of the rest of the world. We wouldn't be alone. China, for example, ready to push back against American trade aggression as it promotes trade with partners including Canada. The US is the home of the world's reserve currency – not yet.
This strategy is much easier said than implemented, and yet we must not only declare it, but also do everything possible to achieve its goals. Success will depend on a degree of humility, adjustments along the way, and involving Canadians in decision-making processes through elected representatives and directly with Indigenous leaders on a cross-national basis. This would mean that parliamentarians, both national and provincial, as well as local councilors and mayors, would put aside the worst impulses of party or parochial interests and show exceptional tolerance, not to mention patriotism.
If that sounds like a lot, it is. But tearing yourself apart and falling prostrate at Trump's feet is something much worse and, ultimately, much more costly.
