Canadian national identity, made in the good old USA
The Great White North won’t be independent in spirit unless we can figure out who we are.
Australia and Canada share many similarities, both being large, resource-rich, politically progressive members of the Anglosphere.
But they differ in at least one critical respect; in Canada, unlike Australia, our economic livelihood is critically dependent on a much larger neighbour. Across the span of generations, the anxieties arising from this dependence have coloured the Canadian identity and have become a prominent theme in our politics – perhaps never more so than in the recently contested Canadian federal election. Mark Carney’s governing Liberals likely would have failed to retain power had it not been for the sudden upsurge in Canadian patriotic sentiment that followed on Donald Trump’s tariff announcements and threats of turning Canada into “the 51st state”.
About 28 per cent of Australian exports go to China, your country’s leading trade partner. And so there are millions of Australians whose living depends on decisions made in Beijing. But compare that with Canada, where 72 per cent of our exports go to the US. What’s more, much of this export trade consists of goods that can’t be sold profitably to any other country.
Many Canadian-manufactured car parts, for instance, are purpose-built for US car assembly plants (and vice versa). And our lack of cross-country pipeline infrastructure restricts much of our oil output to US refineries. Throttling cross-border trade would inconvenience many American consumers and manufacturers, but in Canada the result would be a true economic cataclysm.
During the late Cold War period, Canada’s intellectual class coped with their country’s demeaning geopolitical status by embracing anti-Americanism. Yes, the US was richer. Yes, it protected us through NATO and NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defence Command.
But Canada was the continent’s true moral superpower, having embraced the welfare state and a multilateral approach to foreign relations.
Many Canadians were deeply suspicious of free-trade agreements such as NAFTA, which they suspected were Trojan horses through which US profiteers would sabotage Canada’s one-tier universal healthcare system, while destroying our cherished artistic institutions through a ruthless program of “cultural imperialism”. We sat out the 2003 Iraq War and hectored the US about its unilateral ways.
At home, the government lavished money on the Canadian film, television, book and magazine industries in hopes of building an authentic national identity from the ground up, culturally independent of the US. But that never happened. Just the opposite; the march of globalisation turned protectionism into a fringe creed among Canadian politicians.
Meanwhile, the internet and the 500-channel cable universe destroyed the conceit that Ottawa could build a Hollywood-proof wall around Canadian culture. The same cultural protectionists who had been exhorting us to restrict our TV viewing to CBC documentaries and bilingual language instruction were now just like the rest of us – madly posting about the latest episodes of Gossip Girl, Veronica Mars and Glee.
On top of that, the rise of social media encouraged Canadian politicians, academics and pundits to become direct participants in the US culture war – including its 24/7 fixation on race and gender.
As I wrote in The Australian earlier this year, these themes were eagerly seized on by Justin Trudeau and the young Canadian social justice cadres who came of age during his decade-long rule as prime minister. Trudeau once famously claimed that Canada could become the world’s “first post-national state”. And much of his tenure, it seems, was spent pursuing that aspiration. In keeping with the social justice idiom, he repeatedly presented his own country as a morally illegitimate genocide state, while pushing immigration rates well beyond Canada’s capacity to assimilate new arrivals.
By late 2024, even Trudeau had to admit he’d gone too far with his come-one-come-all admission policies. But by then it was too late to save his bid for another term as prime minister. His own party was done with him and he resigned to make way for Carney, the Liberal establishment’s anointed successor, who won a hastily conducted leadership race in a cakewalk.
Carney’s victory in the April 28 federal election has been treated as a Lazarus-style miracle. In January, when Trudeau announced he’d be stepping down, the opposition Conservatives enjoyed an enormous 25-point lead in the polls. But the comeback was not so astounding as it might seem, as much of it simply amounted to traditional Liberals returning to the fold following the departure of a profoundly unpopular prime minister who’d overstayed his welcome with voters on both sides of the political spectrum.
Carney, his replacement, is a blandly dignified globetrotting central banker who spoke in vague generalities about Canadian values while distancing himself from Trudeau’s most unpopular policies, such as the country’s carbon tax that the new Prime Minister immediately axed as his first order of business.
But the real gift to Carney and the Liberals was Trump’s February 1 announcement of sweeping 25 per cent tariffs on every single Canadian export product except oil and gas – a move that amounted to an economic declaration of war. Those tariffs subsequently were paused. But for domestic political purposes that didn’t matter as Trudeau and then Carney were able to transition into full Captain Canada mode. This fit the national mood as the country, almost overnight, had erupted in hyper-patriotic anti-Trump fury.
In substantive policy terms, both men took an admirably strong, principled stand against Trump and quickly assembled lists of US exports that Canada would target in retaliation.
But the Liberals also – predictably and effectively – used Trump’s threats as a marketing opportunity, presenting themselves as uber-Canadian patriots. All talk of Canada’s allegedly genocidal past, not to mention its purportedly post-national character, were banished from official discourse.
Liberal social media attacked Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre as a would-be Trump acolyte-slash-sycophant. The charge was false. But amid the febrile anti-Trump frenzy that had been sparked by the tariff announcements, Canada’s pundit class was on the hunt for quislings.
By the time election time came, Canada’s political atmosphere had become a little bit more subdued. And so while Carney did lead his Liberals to victory, they didn’t receive the majority parliamentary mandate that many polls had predicted. Moreover, many of the more peevish anti-American gestures that had become common in early 2025 – such as the booing of the US national anthem at sports events featuring American teams – are no longer in evidence. My friends have already cancelled their scheduled US vacations and Canadian airwaves are still full of ads urging us to “Buy Canadian”.
But absent fresh provocations from Trump, I doubt this anti-American mood will sustain itself. The two countries are natural friends and trading partners. Hollywood makes great movies that we all want to watch. When the weather gets cold again in November, our snowbird retirees won’t shiver out the winter in Winnipeg and Thunder Bay out of spite. They’ll pack the car and head to Florida, like always.
Putting partisan politics aside, where does this leave Canada? Who are we – the socialist moral superpower of the Cold War era? The postmodern genocidal splotch on the map of Trudeau’s imagination? Or the proud, feisty and largely united nation that responded so vigorously to Trump’s economic attack in the past few months? None of the above, I suspect. In retrospect, these all feel like transient roles we adopted in response to American influences.
Canada won’t ever become the 51st state and a lot of us felt good waving around our red-and-white pompoms in recent months. But we’ll never be truly independent in spirit unless we can figure out who we are without American assistance.
Jonathan Kay is an editor and podcaster with Quillette and adviser to the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism. His books include Among the Truthers, Legacy, Panics & Persecutions and Magic in the Dark. This article will also be published in Quillette, an Australian-based online magazine that focuses on long-form analysis and cultural commentary.
quillette.com
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Matter of preferences as parties hit home stretch
Good luck to those who are already calling Saturday’s election one way or the other.
What we need is another Keating-style ‘banana republic’ shock
In 1986 we needed to be jolted out of our complacency as a nation living beyond its means. In 2025 there is a dire need for Australia to be jolted out of complacency about our growing geopolitical risk.
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