Is Canada Prepared to Go It Alone?

There’s nothing like having a gun to your head to clarify the mind. Since Trump’s inauguration, a new patriotism has emerged in Canada, and nobody can deny its ferocity. In a recent CNN poll, 91 per cent of Canadians were in favour of pulling away from the United States. We all remember the early days after Trump first began threatening the country, how people would turn products from American companies upside down on the shelves so other customers would know to avoid them. But six months into the new reality, a different question is emerging: What will this new Canadian spirit amount to? It’s Canada Day. How much do we mean the flag-waving?

Turning Canada’s new nationalism into practical applications that preserve our sovereignty is a daunting task. Where even to begin? Part of the problem is that we have no history of talking about what Canada would look like standing alone. Our history, from the British Empire to the post–Second World War transnational order, has focused on how we can meaningfully contribute to a wider system. Under both Conservative and Liberal governments, we’ve wrapped our political identity and our future around international institutions: the transatlantic security apparatus, the World Trade Organization, the Commonwealth, the Francophonie, the rules-based order. And now the rules-based order is crumbling. 

Since Trump’s inauguration, I have been working on Gloves Off, an audio series about how Canada can survive the new threat from that crumbling order. What has emerged so clearly from my interviews with leading experts and thinkers is that Canada lacks even the beginnings of realpolitik. For decades, our politics has been focused on the goal of being good and decent. But that was a luxury we could afford in a previous era. We don’t know how to ask ourselves what to do to maximize our own power, to survive. 

And the questions we face are nation-defining. If we ever needed to go on the offensive, we would be utterly ill-equipped. And that makes us vulnerable, not just to the United States but to anybody else who wants to mess with us.

There are two ways to resist the direct threat of American annexation: first, we become a nuclear power (well within our abilities). The second is a whole-society defence strategy like Finland’s. Despite having a population of just 5.5 million, Finland can put a million soldiers in the field. Becoming a nuclear power and becoming a country with conscription would fundamentally alter the fabric of Canadian society. Either option requires a complete re-evaluation of national priorities. 

The United States is sliding toward authoritarianism. It is perfectly standard for countries sliding toward authoritarianism to use wars against innocent neighbouring countries to justify the suspension of democratic laws and rules. Trump’s already seeded the ground with his nonsense about a fentanyl crisis at the Canadian border. He is breaking down and reordering the military and federal agencies like ICE into forces with personal loyalty to him. The year 2028 will be particularly dangerous for us. He’ll need an excuse like a war to justify a third term. As it stands, we are a snack. 

For 200 years, we’ve been asking ourselves how to be virtuous, how to be good global citizens. And now we have to ask ourselves how to stay alive. True patriotism this year will involve a long look in the mirror. When I asked political figures from across the spectrum how they rated Canadian preparedness in my research for the podcast, they gave high marks for our political commitment: As and Bs. But when I asked experts in our economics and military readiness they were less sanguine: Cs and Ds. 

 That discrepancy is natural enough. Until a few months ago, the idea of America as an enemy was science fiction. We are facing questions we have never faced before. There is an enormous gap between the status of our institutions and our national spirit. The question of how to close that gap is going to dominate our politics for the next four years. The leaders of elite institutions—research centres, universities, giant corporations—want desperately to go back to normal. Bureaucratic complacency is inherent, and so much of our national infrastructure has been built around the United States. Now it has to be repurposed or built from scratch. And it’s a hell of a lot of work. And people can be forgiven for wishing it were just a blip. 

The question that will define the future of this country is whether the people in institutions, who have been rewarded for 70 years for integrating with the United States, now have the capacity to go another way. The most dangerous idea in Canada is that everything will go back to normal, that Trump will calm down in six months or so, that the midterms in 2026 will limit his power, or that at least he will be kicked out in 2028. On some level we all know that’s wishful thinking. At the moment of crisis, we have woken up to find ourselves a fully formed country with missing foundations. Our national existence, for 200 years, has been blessed by ease and the good fortune of our geography. Up to now, patriotism in Canada has come with very little cost. The time has come to put up.

Stephen Marche is the author of The Next Civil War and this month launched a new podcast about Canadian Sovereignty called Gloves Off.