Canada Day is usually no big deal. The country takes off July 1 for the same reason that Americans take off July 4. There are fireworks, and maybe a parade, but you certainly don’t have to show up for either. The established ritual for commemorating Canada’s founding is to drive to the quietest place you can near a body of water and drink beer while staring at it.
This year, though, Canada Day is not quiet. It is not peaceful. This year, Canada is trying to make sure there’s a Canada Day next year.
By now, the shock of American betrayal has worn off. Donald Trump’s threats of annexation by means of economic debilitation are no longer surprising. Unlike many Americans, Canadians have no option but to take these threats seriously. That’s why two months ago, in the most extraordinary election of my lifetime, Canadians chose Mark Carney to lead them away from America.
“The system of open global trade anchored by the United States, a system that Canada has relied on since the Second World War—a system that, while not perfect, has helped deliver prosperity to our country for decades—is over,” Carney said in his victory speech. He has not backed down since his election. “A new imperialism threatens,” he said recently. “Middle powers must compete for interests and attention, knowing that if they’re not at the table, they’re on the menu.” Canada is still figuring out how to stay off the menu.
Trump has caused an extraordinary surge in Canadian nationalism. This nationalism is also new in kind. In the 1960s, Canada’s nationalists feared America’s power—its military strength, yes, but also its cultural cohesion—and wanted to form a corresponding Canadian identity. They started a movement that posed foundational political questions and ultimately resulted in the “patriation” of the country’s constitution (transferring legislative authority from Britain’s Parliament to Canada’s) and the signing of a charter of rights and freedoms in 1982. Today’s Canadian nationalism, by contrast, arises from darker and more practical concerns. The United States is declining into authoritarianism and threatening Canada’s sovereignty. How can Canada ensure that its political, military, and economic institutions survive?
The problem with Canadian nationalism is that Canada is very new. Before 1982, Canada Day was called “Dominion Day” and celebrated the country’s status upgrade to a dominion, rather than a possession, of the British empire. Canada was a product of international and colonial systems before it possessed its own independence. Until it confederated in 1867, it was a series of colonies. After confederation, Canada strove to be the most British dominion in the British empire. Both parties, Liberal and Conservative, have sought to integrate Canada with international trade and security systems. Canada has always lived by the global rules-based order, whichever global rules-based order happened to be around.
Because Canada has relied so much on other countries’ systems, it didn’t fully develop its own. Our military was constructed to complement America’s, not to protect Canada. (Peacekeeping is the kind of military engagement we’re most comfortable with. In fact, we practically invented it.) Thanks to the oceans on either side of us, the frozen wasteland to the north, and a gentle behemoth to the south, no one thought much about having to defend our borders. Now the north is melting. So is the south.
As the rules-based order ebbs, Canada has discovered the extent of its own vulnerability. Canadians need answers to questions they’ve never had to ask, and fast. How do you fight a trade war with an economy that’s more than 10 times the size of your own? What kind of military would Canada need to survive, or even to resist, an American annexation? Should the country become a nuclear power? Recently, I’ve been asking some of those questions as part of an audio series called Gloves Off and have been shocked by just how unprepared Canadians are to address them. Our country’s security services are small and domestically focused. Our economic infrastructure is largely designed to get natural resources to American manufacturers. This is the result of naivete: Who would want to hurt little old us? Nobody needs to imagine anymore.
Now Canada is increasing its defense spending and re-arming with Europe, not America. Trump didn’t give us much choice. In March, he announced the next generation of American fighter jets, which Canada has long purchased, by noting that he would sell an inferior version to other countries: “We like to tone them down about 10 percent, which probably makes sense because someday maybe they’re not our allies, right?” The idea that the American military would turn against Canada once seemed absurd. But the absurd has become almost predictable at this point. If the U.S. Marines are coming for American citizens, surely they could come for Canada too.
Fewer Canadians are traveling to the United States than in the past. Official data from April show that the number of Canadians driving across the border had dropped 35 percent from the previous year. Air travel fell 20 percent. Some are boycotting their southern neighbor, but for others, avoiding it is just a matter of common sense. Why put yourself in the position of being a foreigner in Trump’s America? The Canadian government issued a travel advisory in March, but many Canadians already understood the risk. Similarly, even before our government pulled U.S. products from liquor stores, many Canadians had stopped buying American. Some even turned U.S. brands upside down on supermarket shelves so that others would know not to purchase them.
The U.S. ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, has called the product bans “outrageous” and an “insult” to America. “We have not done anything like that,” Hoekstra told one interviewer in May, neglecting to mention that the U.S. had just launched a trade war. Canada has made some necessary adjustments in response to Trump’s tariffs, by the way: In March, Canadian exports to the United States declined 6.6 percent compared with the month before but rose in the rest of the world to 25 percent, making up nearly the entire difference. By April, though, the figures were more dire. Exports to America fell a staggering 16 percent and increased elsewhere by only 2.9 percent.
If recent months are any indication, the debate that most Canadians will have this July 1—between fireworks, beside the water—won’t be about Canada. It will be about the United States: Is Trump the one driving America off the cliff, or is it the American people? The more hopeful among us will argue that it’s Trump, and that at some point in the future, the alliance between our two countries might return to some semblance of normalcy. But for now, Canada has to figure out what to do with its terrible new freedom. We must make ourselves into something, or disappear.
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