Bully next door is scary and unpredictable, but Canada won’t back down

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/03/2025 (214 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s impossible to know if Canada is truly facing an existential threat from the U.S., or whether the daily barrage of nonsensical, ever-changing tripe spewed by its president is simply a negotiating tactic for future trade negotiations.

Either way, it’s beyond unsettling for Canadians and some Americans alike, excluding the sizable portion of low-information people whose adulation and blind loyalty of U.S. President Donald Trump is the most frightening part of the equation.

Somewhat lost in the dizzying array of information this week around the on-again, off-again tariffs fuelling a Trump-induced trade war is the increasingly troubling idea that the U.S. president is dead serious about annexing Canada and making it the “51st state.”

After a reportedly “colourful” and testy telephone conversation with Trump Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had this to say about the president:

“The excuse that he’s giving for these tariffs today of fentanyl is completely bogus, completely unjustified, completely false,” Trudeau said. “What he wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy, because that’ll make it easier to annex us.”

That is an extraordinary and unprecedented statement for a Canadian prime minister to make. Sure, Trudeau may feel less constrained in his comments since he is about to hand over the reins of power to a new Liberal leader as early as next week.

Nevertheless, the idea that an unstable, authoritarian American president is eyeing Canada as a critical source of natural resources and a geographically advantageous land mass can no longer be dismissed as an off-colour joke.

The idea that an unstable, authoritarian American president is eyeing Canada as a critical source of natural resources and a geographically advantageous land mass can no longer be dismissed as an off-colour joke.

According to a New York Times story published Friday, several sources with first-hand knowledge of a telephone conversation between Trudeau and Trump on Feb. 3 (the day the White House announced its first pause on tariffs), the president waded into some uncharted, if terrifying, waters.

Trump not only repeated his usual fact-challenged grievances about trade relations with Canada, he questioned the validity of the 1908 treaty that finalized the border between Canada and the United States. He told Trudeau he would like to revisit it. He also repeated his desire to re-evaluate how the two countries share lakes and rivers (also governed by treaties).

In other words, this isn’t just about tariffs. It certainly has nothing to do with fentanyl or any other illicit drugs that cross the border, the vast majority of which flow north, not south.

Trump may have something more sinister in mind. That may, partly, explain Trudeau’s annexation statements this week.

This is no longer hyperbole. Canada is, after all, dealing with a president of a country that is now openly musing about when the White House — in its desire to wield greater arbitrary authority — will start defying court orders, including those that seek to protect the constitutionally mandated division of powers between the executive and legislative branches of government.

It’s scary stuff.

Are the annexation threats, like the tariffs, part of a broader plan to instil fear in a much smaller and weaker nation-state such as Canada to gain an advantage in trade negotiations? Perhaps. It’s impossible to know what goes on in the mind of Donald Trump. But it can’t be ignored.

The tariffs alone are wreaking havoc with Canada’s economy (the U.S. economy, too, where GDP growth projections are already being downgraded for 2025). After Trump’s second pause on tariffs announced Thursday, it’s unclear whether they will ever be permanently applied.

Regardless, the economic uncertainty that they’re creating is having a profound impact on the economy, both north and south of the border. The U.S. can likely weather that better than Canada, by virtue of its sheer size and superior economic strength.

And it may be that Trump plans to use an on-again, off-again tariffs strategy — without ever permanently implementing them — as a way of sabotaging Canada’s economy to serve some unknown interest.

Is this truly what the American people want? It’s difficult to say in such a politically fractured country, which is so sharply divided along partisan lines.

Is this truly what the American people want? It’s difficult to say in such a politically fractured country, which is so sharply divided along partisan lines.

Many Americans are cheering the mass layoffs in federal government departments instituted by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, and support Trump’s protectionist policies, including his lies about massive amounts of illicit drugs and criminals flowing into the U.S. from Canada.

Not all Americans do. Many are revolted by what they’re seeing. But they’re not taking to the streets en masse to protest the fascist and dangerous actions of their president. So what does that say?

All Canada can do is what it’s doing now: standing up for itself by imposing retaliatory tariffs and taking other measures, such as banning U.S. alcohol, bringing in anti-U.S. procurement policies, buying local and taxing electricity exports.

That will not end until Trump permanently calls off the tariffs, if he ever does.

The boldness and recklessness of his actions have no precedent. But he underestimates Canada if he thinks it will roll over and play dead.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca