Why Are We Canadians Causing a Trade War with China at this Moment

Cut and paste from CBC 

Sask. premier warns that Chinese tariffs on canola would be ruinous

Alexander Quon, Chris Edwards | CBC News | Posted: March 12, 2025 5:39 PM | Last Updated: 17 hours ago

Premier Scott Moe also took aim at 25 per cent U.S. steel tariffs

Image | Scott Moe - SARM 2025

Caption: Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe warned of the threat posed by Chinese counter tariffs on canola. The 100 per cent tariff is set to kick in March 20, 2025. (Chanss Lagaden/CBC News)

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe lashed out at American and Chinese tariffs on Wednesday, saying they will have a devastating impact on Saskatchewan workers.

"Make no mistake — a 100 per cent tariff on Chinese canola and meal exports, alongside the challenge that we're seeing in the United States with the on and off again tariffs on various products, will decimate the canola industry in Saskatchewan," Moe said at the annual Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) conference in Saskatoon on Wednesday.

"Immediately. In a matter of a number of weeks, not months."

China has announced that it will impose 100 per cent retaliatory tariffs targeting canola, as well as other Canadian goods like seafood and pork.

The decision comes in response to Canada's 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles and a 25 per cent levy on Chinese aluminum and steel products imposed on Oct. 1.

The Chinese tariffs are scheduled to kick in on March 20, just a day after the Saskatchewan budget is set to be introduced in the provincial legislature.

"I'm not sure you're going to hear the budget speak specifically to this, but you're gonna hear the Saskatchewan government speak specifically to this," Moe said.

The premier said no one wants to buy Chinese electric vehicles in Canada, and moving to protect Canadian and American car industries is directly harming agriculturally-based provinces like Saskatchewan.

• Saskatchewan farmers brace as China imposes tariffs on crops

• Sask. gov to stick with U.S. booze and materials pause after Trump postpones tariffs

Moe's ire was not just focused on the incoming Canola tariffs. On Wednesday morning, 25 per cent tariffs on all imports of steel and aluminum to the United States officially came into force.

In response, the Canadian government announced a new set of 25 per cent tariffs on $29.8 billion worth of American imports. They include $12.6 billion worth of steel products, $3 billion worth of aluminum products and $14.2 billion worth of other goods. They are ti go into effect at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Thursday.

Those new tariffs are on top of the federal government's first retaliatory tariffs announced earlier this month, which applied to $30 billion worth of American goods and are to be increased to $155 billion at the end of March. The federal government said they will remain in place until all American tariffs are lifted.

Moe confirmed that Saskatchewan's retaliatory measures announced last week will also remain in place. They include blocking the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority (SLGA) from buying and distributing U.S.-made alcohol, and pausing future government capital projects to assess how American contractors and suppliers could be minimized.

"Things are changing literally by the hour," Moe said. "And we've seen that over the course of the last number of weeks. So a calm hand is necessary."

Image | Saskatchewan NDP Shadow Minister for Economy and Jobs Aleana Young

Caption: Saskatchewan NDP economy and jobs critic Aleana Young says the Sask. Party hasn't done enough to stand up for steel workers. (Krik Fraser)

Aleana Young, the Saskatchewan NDP's economy and jobs critic, said at a separate news conference in Regina on Wednesday that the government should prioritize Canadian steel manufacturers.

"Stop using steel from outside of Canada, stop using cheap Chinese steel, stop using U.S. companies when it comes to building projects here in Saskatchewan," Young said.

More than half of Saskatchewan's exports go to the United States, totalling about $26.7 billion in 2024. About three quarters of those were from one of four products: crude oil, potash, canola oil and uranium.

According to Statistics Canada, in 2024 Saskatchewan exported $387 million worth of iron and steel products and $26 million worth of aluminum to the United States.

Regina is home to one of 13 steel plants in Canada. It's run by Ervaz plc, a steel manufacturing and mining company based in the United Kingdom.

According to United Steelworkers Local 5890 President Mike Day, about 30 per cent of the steel produced at the facility is shipped to a sister plant in the U.S.

"Right now everything is up in the air and we don't know what the next move is," said Patrick Veinot, a staff representative for United Steelworkers. "It's important that we get together and we discuss it. All parties, all stakeholders. That includes finance, that includes business, that includes the unions, you know, as organized labour.

"Everybody needs to sit at a table and discuss this."

Cut and paste from  the Toronto Star

Canada is caught in a ‘double trade war’ — and one premier is urging Ottawa to drop its fight against China

On top of threatened U.S. tariffs, China has brought down another hammer on many Canadian farm and seafood exports.

Updated 3 hrs ago

March 10, 2025

4 min read

Save

B.C. Premier David Eby speaks to reporters from his office following the throne speech at the legislature in Victoria on Feb. 18, 2025.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito

---

By Tonda MacCharlesOttawa Bureau Chief

OTTAWA — On top of threatened U.S. tariffs, China has brought down another hammer on many Canadian farm and seafood exports, hitting them with a “double trade war” that industry leaders say will slam Canadian producers.

In response, B.C. Premier David Eby called on Ottawa to drop its tariff fight against China, saying Canada got nothing out of trying to align trade policy with the United States last fall ahead of President Donald Trump’s election.

Eby, who stepped up measures against the United States along with Ontario Premier Doug Ford on Monday, said the government of Canada should offer a concession in the trade dispute it has with China.

“The president has been completely indifferent to our policy towards China, and in fact, he doesn’t seem to have any designs on treating Canada better than China.” In fact, he said, Trump is “coming after Canada far more aggressively than he is the government of China.“

I think it will be necessary for the federal government to have a look at tariff policy with respect to trading partners around the world, understanding that we don’t want to get crushed between the two biggest economies in the world — the American and the Chinese economies — and ensuring we’re diversifying around the world.”In October, Canada matched U.S. tariffs against Chinese imports, imposing 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, and 25 per cent tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum imports. When the tariffs on China were announced at a cabinet retreat, the Trudeau government made clear it was moving in lockstep with the Americans against Chinese “overcapacity.”

Beijing responded several months later, announcing on Saturday that it will levy a 100 per cent tariff on more than $1 billion worth of Canadian canola oil, meal and pea imports, and a 25 per cent duty on $1.6 billion worth of Canadian aquatic products and pork.

”We can’t survive a double trade war with our two largest trading partners,” said Kyle Larkin, head of the Grain Growers of Canada, which represents about 70,000 grain farmers. 

The Chinese tariffs open a new front that will put even more pressure on the sector at a time when U.S. tariff threats, though temporarily paused, have rattled markets and led to a drop in commodity prices, Larkin said in an interview.

Silo operators are already starting to reject grain farmers trying to drop off their canola, he said. That has a domino effect on the cash flow of farmers who operate with “thin margins,” and sell grain in the fall and spring to earn cash to buy seed, fertilizer and pesticides for the upcoming growing season.

While they want Ottawa to engage with China to resolve the dispute, Larkin said the federal government — which offered $1 billion in new credit financing on Friday through Farm Credit Canada — will also have to look at higher compensation and supports for farmers.

“We’re already seeing about 1,000 to 1,500 family farms lost every year. So, you know, it’s kind of a precipitous situation that we find ourselves in right now,” said Larkin.

Michael Harvey, executive director of the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, said the organization had warned the Canadian government last year that it risked Chinese retaliation because Ottawa did not go through the kind of investigation that European countries undertook in line with World Trade Organization processes. 

The alliance, which represents Canadian ranchers, producers, and food processors that export products, is now calling on Ottawa to engage with China to persuade it to drop the looming tariffs

The incoming prime minister, Mark Carney, talked tough on tariffs and Trump in his victory speech after winning the Liberal leadership.

During his campaign he said he would impose “dollar-for-dollar” tariffs on the U.S. He did not repeat that threat Sunday night, but said “the Canadian government is rightly retaliating with our own tariffs that will have maximum impact in the US and minimum impact here in Canada.

“My government will keep our tariffs on until the Americans show us respect, and make credible, reliable commitments to free and fair trade. In the meantime, we will ensure that all proceeds from our tariffs will be used to protect our workers,” he said.

On Monday, the prime minister-designate spoke with Ford about the tariff fight.

Ford told Bloomberg TV that Carney is “right in line with what I believe in” when it comes to dealing with Trump.

Despite the U.S. tariffs being temporarily paused until April 2, provinces are acting.

Ontario slapped a promised 25 per cent export tariff on electricity shipped to the U.S. on Monday, and B.C. removed all American liquor from provincially run stores, not just those from “red” states where Republicans are in power. 

Eby is now preparing legislation to allow B.C. to levy tariffs on American cars travelling through Canada en route to Alaska, and has recommended similar tariffs on American thermal coal shipments that transit through Canada to reach shipping routes to Asian markets. 

Former prime minister Jean Chrétien told Liberals Sunday night that governments of all stripes in Canada should consider responding to U.S. tariffs with export tariffs on Canadian oil, gas, potash, steel, aluminum and electricity shipped to the U.S.

Ford said Alberta Premier Danielle Smith should slap export tariffs on her province’s oil exports south of the border, like he did with electricity.

“You want to talk about a trump card that will instantly change the game,” said Ford. “The Americans, all of a sudden their gas prices go up 90 (cents) to a dollar a gallon, they will lose their minds.” He urged Smith not to be shy about it as the trade war continues. “We need to at least put that in the window.”

Smith adamantly rejected that notion again Monday.

In a news conference in Beijing earlier Monday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said China’s move is justified because Canada disregarded its arguments against EVs.

“Canada has insisted on taking discriminatory restrictive measures on some Chinese imports. This seriously violates WTO rules, disrupts normal trade order, and gravely harms China’s lawful rights and interests. The countermeasures China has taken are fully necessary, justified, reasonable and lawful.”

Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly is urging New Canadian Liberal party leader Mark Carney to take a strong stance on tariffs imposed by the United States under the Trump administration. (AP Video / March 10, 2025)

With files from Robert Benzie

Tonda MacCharles is Ottawa Bu

How to Resist the Dismantling of Canada

 The Clarity Act

After the very close call in the second referendum on Quebec sovereignty, the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien passed the “Clarity Act.”  The title is almost a joke since it should really be called the “oh-no-you-don’t act” and doesn’t offer much clarity.  The Act specifies that if any province wishes to separate from Canada, the Federal House of Commons  must accept the question and will determine what constitutes a majority without clarifying the definition of a “clear question” or “a majority.”  The Act also specifies that provincial secession would require an amendment to the Canadian constitution and must respect the rights of the provinces, territories, First Nations and minorities.

In the present context, we should be grateful.  According to recent polling, the majority of Quebecers (58%) are proud to be Canadian.  

Wexit and Western Separtism

The Clarity Act notwithstanding, the greatest internal  existential threat to Canada is western disenchantment.  Danielle Smith leader of the United Conservative Party, Premier of Alberta, and former leader of the Wildrose Party,  as I have repeated, is currently the weakest link and greatest threat to Canada’s survival as a country. Speaking at a gathering for an recent iteration of the Wildrose Party, (the Wildrose Independence of Alberta Party) in 2020, interim leader Paul Hinman announced:  

I have great faith in Albertans that when that referendum comes they’ll make the right choice for a sovereign nation, [ . . .] We’ll be a beacon of freedom and prosperity around the world and I think Alberta will overwhelmingly by that point be voting 60, 70, 75 per cent saying, ‘You know what we need to be our own nation.’

Canada as a 51st US State

 Donald Trump’s musings on Canada becoming a 51st state began as a bad joke but with repetition have devolved into a greater insult and threat.  Recently he suggested that “Canada would be a good candidate to become the 51st state,”  suggesting we are in competition with our friends in the Common Wealth of Puerto Rico.  Trump’s posturing is, of course, absurd—Canada is the "bigger" country in every sense of the word.     Nonetheless we are being threatened and bullied.  We need to consider how to respond and anticipate what will come next.

How to respond to a bully

Elon Musk, who endured his fair share of bullying, and is now Trump's official bully,  offers this advice on how to respond to a bully:  

I realized by then that if someone bullied me, I could punch them very hard in the nose, and then they wouldn’t bully me again. They might beat the shit out of me, but if I had punched them hard in the nose, they wouldn’t come after me again.   

Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson.    https://a.co/9TzEH4e

Canada cannot win a trade war with the USA.  Our only response is to inflict as much damage as possible on the USA and prepare to endure and survive the pain which the USA will inflict upon us.

A Chain is only as strong as. . .

The adage is well known, even Biblical, that we are strong when we stand together but weak when we stand alone.  Trump's buffoonery about Canada becoming the 51st state is a ploy.  His claim that the USA doesn't need Canadian oil, lumber, gas and cars is the beginning of negotiations.  As the economic effects of Trump's tariffs and the trade war begin to take effect in Canada, there will be a more reasonable offer to Alberta--full state status, two senators like all other states, a number of seats in the Congress based on population, and, of course, promise of a governorship for Danielle Smith if not a position in Congress or the Senate.  Most Alberta oil already flows south, but if Alberta becomes a US state, oil flowing east or west will be heavily taxed.   The next target for US annexation will be British Columbia, not just because it is a prized Pacific province but because it is a strong link between China and Canada which the USA will want to sever once and for all.  In Trump's twisted imagination, once Albert and BC have succumbed, the rest of the provinces and territories will line up begging for access to his greater America on whatever degrading terms he chooses to impose.

Was It a job interview?

When Canadian Premiers came out of their half-hour meeting at the White House, they looked ashen and shaken.  Their repeated insistence that it was a "high level meeting" told me that one thing was certain: it wasn't a high level meeting.  Later, when I learned that one of the "high level" people they met with was in charge of hiring White House staff, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

The Best defence . . .

Step one in resisting the dismantling of Canada is to address Western disenchantment:  more pipelines? maybe. Reviewing the equalization payment system in which Alberta gives and Quebec receives? Probably.  A high-speed train so we can finally connect and get to know each other? Definitely. It doesn't make sense that we are a single country so divided by geography.  

End the mythologizing of China

Then there's China.  Since December 1, 2018, we Canadians have been mythologizing China as a dangerous, evil empire trying to influence our elections and  threaten our sovereignty.  Well, guess what, they are not the most dangerous empire threatening our sovereignty at the moment.  China remains our second largest trading partner and our only real leverage in a trade-war with the USA.  "China" remains a word that Canadian politicians cannot utter in light of six years of a brainwashing level of China-bashing.  However, when Canadian politicians of every stripe say "diversify trade" that is code for "China."  And beyond China is BRIC+ (Brazil, Russia, India, China, plus 19 other countries) ; in other words, 55% of the population of the world.  And yes we will need the Chinese to help us build high-speed rail across Canada, just as we needed the Chinese to build the original railway across Canada in the 1870s.  Only this time we will need to treat the Chinese with a lot more respect, humanity and justice.

Addendum

One Premier—David Eby—has dared to say:

Canada is caught in a ‘double trade war’ — and one premier is urging Ottawa to drop its fight against China

Save the CBC! It Matters Now More than Ever!

 

This is a first.  I have cut and pasted a CBC article on The Sour Grapevine in order to share it with my readers and so I can now post it on Facebook.

Heritage minister pitches CBC/Radio-Canada overhaul and a major funding hike

Pascale St-Onge says a CBC funding boost will protect Canada's cultural 'sovereignty' 

John Paul Tasker · CBC News · Posted: Feb 20, 2025 12:48 PM EST | Last Updated: February 20

Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge announced Thursday a plan to overhaul CBC/Radio-Canada to shore up an institution she said is "at a critical crossroads" but one that is necessary as the country faces American threats to its sovereignty.

While pitching a program that is unlikely to be enacted by the current government given the likelihood of a federal election sometime soon, St-Onge said American "billionaire tech oligarchs" are tightening their grip on the flow of information and Canada needs to revive its nearly century-old public broadcaster to "tell our own stories," saying it's a "national security issue" that so much of what Canadians consume is generated elsewhere.

"More than ever it's important to rely on our own sources of information — made by and for Canadians," she said.

"CBC will never be controlled by Musk or Zuckerberg. It will never belong to billionaire tech oligarchs. It will always belong to the people of Canada," she said, referencing Elon Musk, the owner of social media platform X and Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.

• CBC's new CEO says cutting government funding would 'cripple' English and French services

"It's not a Liberal or a Conservative issue. It's a commitment to ourselves, our culture and our independence," she added, saying the CBC was first formed in 1936 to give Canadians a homegrown source for news and entertainment when much of that content was American.

To improve the quality of the corporation's programming in both English and French, boost the availability of "trustworthy, local and impartial news" and make the broadcaster a more reliable source of information during emergencies, St-Onge is pitching a funding increase that could nearly double its yearly appropriation.

She said per capita funding for CBC/Radio-Canada is about $33.66, the second lowest in the developed world ahead of only the U.S.

WATCH | Heritage minister says funding should be closer to other G7 countries: 

Heritage minister says funding for public broadcaster should be closer to other G7 countries

1 day ago

Dur

Is Canada a Country?

 Is Canada a country?

According to Wikipedia, World Atlas, the CIA Factbook and Britannica, Canada is a country; in fact, the second largest country in the world.  However, Quebec sovereigntists have long claimed that Canada is not a real country.  At the other end of the. . . .whatever we are . . . in a Macleans article published in 2018, Scott Gilmore is categorical that “Canada is not a country.”  Prophetically, seven years ago, Gilmore pointed out that  

One lesson that the last 20 years has reinforced is that there are far more black swan moments, completely unanticipated game-changing events, out there than we realize. It is almost inevitable that this country is one day going to face some unexpected shock.

As a co-founder of a theatre company committed to producing Canadian plays, then a teacher, and a professor of Canadian Literature and Drama, I have been dealing with the question of “Canadian nationalism” for fifty years.  This “black swan moment”—with the President of the USA musing aloud about Canada becoming a 51st state— is the first time in my experience that Canadian politicians, journalists and the citizenry in general have, at the same time, shown interest in engaging with the question.

The Paradox of Canadian nationalism

The paradox of Canadian nationalism is that Canadians love Canada but they don’t like nationalism.  The solution for the last 50 years now has been to imagine Canada as a “cultural mosaic,” a state with many nations and cultures. Much as I value and celebrate multiculturalism and what the philosopher Charles Taylor called “different ways for belonging,” I recognize the challenge of finding unity, or even consensus, in our diversity.  In this our moment of existential crisis, what appears to be holding us together is disdain for Donald Trump.  It’s not enough.

What are we?

Gilmore underlines that “ We love to revel in our progress as a ‘post-national’ state.”  Then he asks rhetorically, “So if Canada is not a people, not a nation, possibly not even a nation state, what are we?”  In the  reverse psychology of the 1970s, the answer was that Canada was/is a colony.  In theory, in 1867 we ceased to be a British colony and became a country, but as of 2025, we are still requiring an oath of allegiance to King Charles III.  We don’t even have an up-to-date constitution.  We most typically hear about the repatriated archaic constitution when one premier or another threatens to use the “notwithstanding clause” to override the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms created in 1982. Canada has yet to resolve its treaty issues with First Nations. And without any official declaration, in all practical terms, we have become a branch-plant colony of the USA.  Or, as the Chinese Foreign Minister told our Ambassador, “You are lapdogs of the United States.”  (Gee!  Why would the Chinese think that?)

Gilmore’s Answer

Gilmore’s answer to his rhetorical question:  “we remain the same colour on the map not because of a strong sense of shared identity or a common purpose, but because we simply haven’t had much of a reason to split up. Yet.”  Then came Trump 2.0.  In my last post, I expressed some glimmer of hope that Canadian reaction to Trump would cause us to do the one thing that makes us a country . . .act like a country.  I’ve seen lots of nationalist elan from my friends and the citizenry in general.  Some politicians have begun to say the right things:  noting the willingness of Canadians to respond unitedly to Trumpian threats, talk of bringing down interprovincial trade barriers, and diversifying trade. 

Canada as an “imagined community”

Since the late postmodernist period, since 1983 to be precise and the publication of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, the expression “imagined communities” has been used in academic circles to sidestep uncomfortable discussions of nationalism. “Nations,” according the Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens:  A Brief History of Humankind, are just one of many “imagined orders,” fictitious believed-in realities that allow us to develop and progress together. If Canada is going to be a “real country,” beyond disentangling from the domination of the US economy, culture and federation, we must do the very hard work of imagining the Canadian nation, daring to share and receive its cultures and histories with one another, and find reasons for pride and celebration and unity. 

Is Donald Trump the Alien Invader that Canada Needs?

Unlikely Canada:  One more time

 I thought this was the right time to remind readers of my post on “Unlikely Canada,”  Peter Zeihan’s prediction that Canada was unlikely to survive as a country beyond 2030, together with his claim that Alberta was destined to become the 51st American state. Ever since my youthful Canadian nationalist phase in the 1970s, I have rankled at Canada’s acting like an economic branch plant, as well as a cultural and political colony of the USA. The history of Canada has always been a story of its relationship with the USA.   The Canadian Encyclopedia offers a succinct overview of this history, the vacillations from resistance to acquiescence and back again, from  the American Revolution, to the War of 1812, to the Rebellions of 1837,  from John MacDonald’s anti-American grumblings to Wilfred Laurier’s concessions to reciprocity.  We live in the constant shadow of "manifest  destiny." 

A History of back and forth and con jobs

The USA was late to enter the First World War (three years after Canada), but in the 1920s and 30s the similarities between the two countries grew, and with the Second World War, the USA emerged as the great defender of the values Canadians held dear.  Animosity between Diefenbaker and Kennedy kept Canada out of the nuclear arms race. (Diefenbaker blamed American inference for his election loss in 1963.) Pearson kept Canada out of the Vietnam War (politically if not materially), and Pierre Trudeau opened the door to accept American draft evaders.  Flickerings of Canadian nationalism in the 1970s were extinguished with the Reagan-Mulroney bromance in the 1980s and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).  Under Mulroney, Canadian men and women served in George Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 1990-91.  (You may remember how we were conned by a young girl claiming to be a nurse telling stories of Iraqi soldiers throwing babies out of their incubators.  She turned out to be a member of the Kuwaiti royal family.  See Petrodollar Warfare.)  Jean Chrétien  kept Canada out of George W. Bush’s bogus-WMD war in Iraq in 2003.  

After the Harper Conservatives had negotiated and signed the Canada-China  Foreign Investment Promotion and Protecton Agreement, the Justin Trudeau Liberals were elected, in 2015, on the promise of a free-trade agreement with China,  Canada’s second largest trading partner and only leverage against total US economic domination.  [The Government of Canada web site on Canada-China free trade has been removed since I posted a link to it on 11 October 2024.  See Pubic Inquiry on Foreign Interference] * In 2016, Donald Trump was elected as US President.  Unbeknownst to President Trump, his National Security Advisor, John Bolton hatched a plot in 2018 to make Canada the patsy by having the RCMP arrest the CFO of Huawei  ensuring the breakdown of trade relations between Canada and China.  Far from garnering respect and appreciation from the Americans, our mindless acquiescence to US interests in detriment to our own has made us appear weak, inept and fearful.  The newly elected US President will not hesitate to exploit our ineptitude, weakness and fear.

The Merger: For and against  (Conrad Black against!?!?)

In my faulty memory Conrad Black, one-time Canadian owner of the world’s third-largest newspaper empire, was an advocate of Canada joining the USA.  I therefore read with great interest his critique and rebuttal of Diane Francis’s book, The Merger of the Century:  Why Canada and the USA Should Become One Country. In his editorial (18 Jan. 2014), Black claims, “I was for a time reviled [. . . ] by some of the traditional, leftist Canadian nationalists, [that would be me] though I was never an annexationist.” 

As Francis was promoting her book, arguing that the merger was already underway and nigh on inevitable,  Black countered that   

Canada is, by every measure, a better-governed country than the United States, and much of this is new in the last 30 years. Not even the multi-trillion-dollar pay-off Diane Francis envisions would be an adequate compensation to Canadians to take such a great leap backwards in good government.

Diane Francis in 2014

Diane Francis laid out the basic arguments of her book in a lecture at the University of Western Ontario in 2014.

Diane Francis in 2025

Interviewed last week, Francis’s perspective seemed to have shifted slightly, as she emphasized the last chapter of her book on what Canada had to do if there was no merger with the USA:  end tariff barriers between provinces, take over the defence of its own borders and coastline, expand its business and trade options.  However, in the recent interview, she did return to the notion of Canada and the USA becoming a single federation, following a European Union economic model.

Can We now start talking about the US threat to Canadian sovereignty and independence, or should we maintain our focus on Chinese influence on Canadian elections?

One point that particularly struck me in this recent interview is her claim that she was blacklisted by the media as she attempted to promote her book in 2014.  Perhaps we would have benefited from having a more robust conversation ten years ago.  I tried to to make this point, from a very different perspective, in 2002, at a conference presentation at the University of Toronto: “ I am prepared to be unsentimental about the destiny of the Canadian nation, but I would consider it a tragedy if Canadians did not participate fully in the exchange and debate and decision-making process.

Will Trump force us to start acting like a sovereign nation?

Back to the question.  In theory, it is thought that an external threat is sometimes what a nation needs to appreciate the value of its sovereignty, to generate solidarity and unity.  For a moment I thought Donald Trump might be that beneficial threat.  Unfortunately, so far the response has been lip service and chaos.  And Danielle Smith has already responded like the Governor of Alberta, the 51st state, as predicted by Peter Zeihan: holding one-on-one meetings with President-elect Trump and refusing to join with Canadian Premiers and the Prime Minister in threatening to cut off energy supplies from Canada to the USA in the event of a trade war.  The survival of Canada may still not be “unlikely” but it is looking less and less likely these days. 

Addendum

* After a bit of searching I found another Government of Canada web page which makes reference to the Canada-China Free Trade Agreement which was in the exploratory stages in 2016.