Though it has been something of a slow-burn news story on the American side of the world’s longest undefended border, President Donald Trump’s constant threats of annexation, along with his chaotic and unnecessary trade war, have accomplished something he probably never intended: He’s managed to unite Canada in a way few thought possible. What Trump doesn’t appear to realize is that doing so has also cost him, if not an ally, then at least a like-minded collaborator.
It is perhaps the ultimate demonstration of Trump’s unmitigated ignorance that he may have ruined the prospects of the most Trumpian politician in Canadian history. Trump’s unjustified and inexcusable attack on Canada’s sovereignty has reversed the very political trends that have developed in Canada over the last several years that might have been to his advantage. Trump has united Canada against not only him but perhaps the United States as a whole, for generations to come.
The future of Canada didn’t look very promising throughout 2024. The federal government appeared weak and ineffectual while certain provincial premiers routinely challenged federal authority in key areas of jurisdiction. A general affordability crisis worsened as inflation grew and the value of the Canadian dollar fell to lows not seen in decades. Battered by decades of chronic underfunding, Canada’s health care system seemed on the verge of collapse.
Calls for former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to resign grew with intensity throughout the year, while polling suggested his chief rival, Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre, would easily win the election scheduled for 2025 with a commanding majority. Poilievre was far from a unifying voice in Canadian politics; he opted instead for exceptionally divisive rhetoric designed to appeal to his die-hard supporters first and foremost.
Among Poilievre’s preferred rhetorical devices was his assertion that “Canada is broken.”
Much like Trump, Poilievre often seemed to be the one doing the breaking, and offering little more than catchphrases as a stand-in for real policy. Poilievre is unnecessarily combative and hostile with Canadian journalists, despite Canadian news media’s conservative bias. He has repeatedly called for defunding the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, or CBC—Canada’s national public broadcaster and a cornerstone of Canadian cultural identity—calling it a propaganda arm of the Liberal Party of Canada (sound familiar?), despite the fact that studies of CBC News coverage show it tends to benefit Canada’s conservatives.
Poilievre was also a major opponent of Canada’s generally successful Covid-19 pandemic response, and has unsuccessfully promoted legislation to oppose vaccine mandates for federal workers and the traveling public. More significantly, Poilievre was a visible supporter of the so-called Freedom Convoy of early 2022, a national protest movement against pandemic containment measures that ultimately evolved into a prolonged occupation of parts of downtown Ottawa, and which was arguably inspired by the January 6 riot.
It was his support of this protest in particular that is credited with having given Poilievre an edge in the 2022 Conservative Party leadership contest over his more centrist rival. Poilievre has also received many of the same far-right endorsements as Trump, including those of Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, Conrad Black, and Ben Shapiro. If Trump wanted Canada to be the fifty-first state, Poilievre might have made an excellent collaborationist governor. But, as Frank Sinatra once sang,“Then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid.”
Trudeau finally capitulated to abysmal polling numbers and the very real threat that his Liberal Party might be wiped out in the 2025 election by announcing his resignation on January 6, 2025. Poilievre’s ascendancy to the prime ministership, with a majority government no less (guaranteeing him a minimum four-year term), seemed certain.
Then Donald Trump started talking about annexation, slapped tariffs on Canadian exports, and started a trade war, falsely claiming that fentanyl was coming into the United States through Canada, and that the U.S. was “subsidizing” Canada to the tune of $200 billion per year. The reality is actually the opposite: Less than 1 percent of all fentanyl entering the U.S. comes from Canada, and there are at least three different ways in which Canada subsidizes the U.S., including via secure, low-cost energy exports.
Though fact-checking the Trump administration consistently proves to be a fruitless endeavor, if it thought Canadians would roll over at the first sign of unwarranted American aggression, it couldn’t have been more wrong. Almost immediately, Canadians instituted a voluntary boycott of American products, something that was followed by government actions, such as provincial liquor control boards removing American booze from the shelves. Then Canadians started canceling their American vacations. It’s too early to tell how much damage this will do to the American economy, but consumer and institutional boycotts and “buy Canadian” initiatives may have already cost the American economy tens of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs this year.
Initial counter-tariffs will affect an estimated $60 billion worth of trade, but that could increase as Canada responds to Trump’s escalations. Canada has threatened total retaliatory tariffs that may reach $155 billion. But that’s not all. Given that Trump has essentially proven the continental trade agreement—CUSMA, as it’s known in Canada—is no longer worth the paper it was written on, other measures are being explored that, as recently as last October, would have been inconceivable. Suspending energy and electricity exports is now on the table, as is the possible cancellation of lucrative defense contracts. Completely abandoning free trade with the U.S. may be on the horizon in the near future.
Despite the fact that any trade war will have economic consequences for Canadians—especially if it needs to permanently decouple from the U.S. and reorient its economy toward Asian and European markets, a process that could take many years—Canadian support for tougher measures against the Trump administration is consistently high.
Far more significant is the reversal of Poilievre’s once sky-high fortunes. Having built much of his political identity as an “anti-Trudeau,” antiestablishment faux populist, in the same vein as Trump and his ilk, Poilievre now finds himself both without a nemesis on which to blame all of Canada’s problems and appearing too close—in ideology as much as personality—to the number one enemy of the Canadian public. Recent polling suggests that not only has Poilievre lost his once formidable lead in the race to become Canada’s next prime minister but that Trudeau’s successor—the economist Mark Carney—may even lead the governing Liberal Party back to a parliamentary majority for the first time in six years.
Put another way, if this occurs, it would be the single most startling reversal in Canadian political history, by a considerable margin.
The ascendancy of Poilievre was all but guaranteed when Trudeau announced his resignation in early January. Had Trump not threatened Canada with tariffs, and instead simply waited for the federal election, he may very well have been negotiating with Poilievre.
And despite Poilievre’s more than 20 years serving as a parliamentarian—which has included stints as a junior Cabinet minister and his more recent foray into the leadership of Canada’s right-wing Conservative Party—he remains something of a political neophyte. Elected fresh out of college, Poilievre is the epitome of a career politician but otherwise has no career, nor profession to speak of. Moreover, a key Poilievre ally—Jamil Jivani—is close friends with Vice President JD Vance. Where this may have once been mentioned as a potential strength of an incoming Poilievre administration—a direct and personal connection to the White House—it is now seen as a major liability as Poilievre tries to rebrand himself as a patriot.
Though it isn’t really helping, Trump has further insulted Poilievre by saying he’s “not a MAGA guy.” However much Poilievre may be trying to live up to Trump’s statement, it’s abundantly obvious in Canada that Poilievre is being dragged down by the same “Maple MAGA” movement that convinced Trudeau to resign and brought Poilievre so close to the halls of power in the first place.
It’s still not clear when Canadians will go to the polls to choose their next government (it could happen any time between late April and late October). Still, Mark Carney has momentum few observers ever would have imagined for an economist with no prior political experience. Carney’s experience running the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England is likely to appeal to a broad swath of Canadian voters. He has taken credit for steering Canada through the worst of the 2008 financial crisis and for keeping Great Britain afloat during Brexit. There are few people with his set of skills and professional experience, and it’s looking like this will be an easy choice come election time.
If the results of the Liberal Party leadership race are any indication, Carney may secure a majority government for his party, demolish Poilievre, and perhaps even take down the personality cult that is Poilievre’s Conservative Party (Carney won on the first ballot, virtually unheard of, with 86 percent of the vote).
Though Carney is unlikely to feign progressive ideals, as Trudeau did to get elected a decade ago, Canadian progressives may see in him something better than simply the lesser evil. A Carney majority government would likely present a formidable challenge to Trump while simultaneously bringing about a sea change in Canadian politics. If current polling is accurate, not only will Carney vanquish Poilievre and his increasingly far-right Conservative Party, but he may also prove fatal to Canada’s traditional progressive party, the New Democratic Party, or NDP, including the potential loss of official party status. This may ultimately result in Canada’s conservatives moving back toward the center and encourage the NDP to move further left (Canadian progressives have blamed the party’s centrist slide for its poor performance in the last several federal elections).
This notwithstanding, a Carney victory would be an unambiguous message from the Canadian public that Trump must be opposed at all costs and therefore that the vulnerabilities of continental interconnectedness should be corrected as quickly as possible. If this means transitioning away from economic integration with the U.S., who better than Carney to manage such a transition? This may appeal to some Canadian progressives who recognize free trade with the U.S. as a foundational problem that has eroded Canadian political and economic sovereignty, as much as its social safety net and culture, for more than a generation.
Though Carney is an exceptionally well-connected establishment figure with a decidedly neoliberal track record, Trump’s existential threat to Canada may necessitate a broad national effort to economic independence and self-sufficiency that’s incompatible with neoliberalism. Canadians seem eager to fight back as much as imagine a new, better, and perhaps more autonomous and independent future. They may end up with a shift in the status quo that doesn’t involve cozying up to the madman in the White House.
Whatever happens next, a change in government in Washington, D.C., four years from now will likely be insufficient to return the Canada-U.S. relationship to what we might have once considered “normal.” The Democratic Party’s silence on this subject has been deafening. As much as American liberals and progressives may be disheartened with the lack of Democratic Party opposition to Trump’s reign of terror, Canadians—irrespective of their political ideology—are unlikely to forgive or forget.
It may yet prove to be the greatest irony of the second Trump administration: As he destroyed the country he spent years dividing, he united Canadians in their hatred of him and everything he represented.
