Team Canada’s lesson: When trade partners go dark, seek out the bright parts

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What do we do when a country turns against us, or is ruled by a regime that is contradictory to our fundamental values? Do we hold our noses and try to play along, or do we cut that country out using the blunt tools of bans, sanctions and tariffs?

This is far from an abstract question today. Canada more or less completely cut itself off from Russia after President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022. However, in relations with China, Canada has not fully followed the lead of the United States, which has gone so far as to ban the TikTok app and charge American consumers a painful 100-per-cent tariff on electric cars. With India, Canada is simultaneously trying to deepen economic and trade relations while being shunned and condemned – and its citizens allegedly physically attacked – by the ruling party.

Yet it is not the right question. If Canada simply ended ties with any country whose rulers stepped outside the bounds of democracy, we would not have much of an economy left. And in many cases, we would be assisting in the subjugation of citizens and companies who oppose the regime.

Better than asking what sorts of countries we should do business with, we ought to be asking which specific parts of those countries we can maintain and even deepen relationships with – and whether those countries actually have distinct and independent parts.

To borrow a musical analogy, we ought to ask not whether a country is authoritarian or democratic, but whether it is monophonic – like a saxophone, issuing a single note under control of the lone player – or polyphonic, like an orchestra or a jazz band, its many players able to deviate from the composition’s charts or veer into outright dissonance. If the horns have gone sour, say, you can keep jamming with the rhythm section.

The polyphonic state, even under an intolerable strongman leader, still has regions, cities, institutions and companies that are worth cultivating relations with. In fact, doing so can help loosen that leader’s hold.

Canadians know this because our largest trading partner recently went dark, its authoritarian-minded president turning angrily against Canada after 2016; there are strong signs he will do so again if he wins November’s election. But the United States is a profoundly polyphonic country. That fact allowed Team Canada to work: After Mr. Trump tried to eliminate crucial free-trade relations, an unprecedented coalition of Canadian business people and politicians from all parties mounted a successful campaign aimed at those U.S. states, cities, federal departments, corporations and workforces that don’t sing to Mr. Trump’s tune, even if they’re in his party, and restored trade relations. The Globe’s Adrian Morrow reports that a new Team Canada campaign is already under way, to prepare for a potential 2025 Trump presidency.

This approach could work with India. There are alarming signs that Hindu-nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi may break relations with Canada after being accused of sending agents to kill Canadians of Sikh ethnicity (and because he tends to favour far-right countries). But India is rather polyphonic. Many of its 36 states and territories, as well as many corporations and public institutions, are not in line with Mr. Modi’s party. Canada will need India if the United States falls deeper into authoritarian isolationism; this could be achieved with another Team Canada.

If left in power, authoritarian leaders can turn their countries into one-note organs. In the 2000s, Russia was polyphonic; it was possible for Western investors, provincial and state politicians, universities and militaries to have relationships with their Russian counterparts without being touched by Mr. Putin’s ideology. Then he removed voices: In 2004, he eliminated state elections, making governors directly appointed. Big companies all had to fall under his indirect control. Now, during this period of total war, even the smallest institutions have become mere notes from Mr. Putin’s tuneless trumpet.

China is more difficult. It was once fairly polyphonic, tolerating autonomy (within firm limits) in some of its cities and 22 provinces, its private corporations, its universities and some media, even during President Xi Jinping’s first years.

Then, especially after 2017, he shifted from an authoritarian chorus to a stark drumbeat of totalitarianism, obliterating most independence. There definitely are still private companies and institutions that don’t want to sing from Mr. Xi’s songbook and that resist state and party control; the problem is that we can’t clearly know which ones.

European leaders, seeking alternatives to an unco-operative America, have been courting the Chinese regime. Canada shouldn’t go there, but a U.S.-style total economic cutoff would serve no useful purpose and leave us dependent on other malign forces. Instead – and not only with China – we need to invest much more in the needed screening, scrutiny and intelligence resources to avoid those sections of the orchestra that are too close to the conductor’s baton.