‘Acute, Sustained, Profound and Abiding Rage': Canada Finds Its Voice

New York Times

3 days ago

Canada is living through an era of acute, sustained, profound and abiding rage. The source is President Trump; the object is the United States. The president, commander of the most powerful military the world has ever known, has declared repeatedly that he intends to soften up the Canadian economy in preparation for annexation. Americans, from what I can tell, don't seem to take this possibility seriously, even though he undertook the task in earnest last week by imposing a 35 percent tariff. The American threat to our sovereignty, so sudden, so foolish, is reshaping Canadian life.
All over the world, as the United States retreats from the global order it created, nations are reforming their priorities, changing their institutions and, as a result, changing their identities. By 2027, Japan's military budget will have swelled 60 percent in five years. Germany, too, is having to remilitarize, though it is having difficulty finding willing troops; the stigma against combat has been inculcated for several generations. Brazil has already begun trading with China in Chinese currency, discovering a means of avoiding contact with America altogether. These are all drastic changes in how these countries exist, in who they are. But perhaps nowhere is the change more profound than in Canada.
In response to America's threats, Canada is in the middle of the greatest explosion of nationalism in the country's history, far more substantial than the nationalism of the 1960s. Then, Canadian identity emerged and proliferated through books and music and the national broadcaster, the CBC, as well as through official policies of bilingualism and multiculturalism. The entire time, Canada was integrating economically and militarily with the United States. Now the province of Ontario has banned all sales of American alcohol. More than two-thirds of Canadians say they plan to buy fewer American grocery products this year. Canadian travel to America continues its steep decline, although that may have less to do with political resistance than with the fact that the United States has made spectacularly clear that foreigners within its borders may be subject to detention, and possibly even violence, without recourse.
People on both sides of the border hope that this economic antipathy is temporary. (There's no replacement for bourbon.) But the second Trump administration has established a more enduring truth about the United States: It is no longer a country that keeps its agreements. Mr. Trump has violated the deal he himself struck in his first term. You should do business with such people only if you have to. According to a poll from February, 91 percent of Canadians want to rely less on the United States as a trade partner.
The question is how to extricate ourselves from America, and how painful that will be. 'Our old relationship with the United States, a relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over,' Prime Minister Mark Carney declared during his victory speech after winning the federal election. '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 for a country for decades — is over.'
This turn away from America is not only a Liberal Party position. 'I was — I think it's fair to say — probably the most pro-American prime minister in Canadian history,' Stephen Harper, whose administration lasted from 2006 to 2015, recently told the Midwestern Legislative Conference, a cross-border meeting of American and Canadian lawmakers, before acknowledging that he advised the current Liberal government to diversify as rapidly as possible. 'We just cannot be in a position in the future where we can be threatened in this way.'
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