Prime minister Lester B. Pearson once said that to live alongside the United States is “like living with your wife. At times it is difficult to live with her. At all times it is impossible to live without her.”
Canada is on the precipice of a new relationship with a partner yet unknown. In one outcome, we’ll get a new wife not unlike the old: a familiar type, relatively predictable, and governed by convention and the burden of expectations. We haven’t really known her for that long, but we do know where she comes from, and that means we can expect the marriage to be within the range of normal.
In the other outcome, Canada will be forced to reconcile with an ex: one we know is erratic, vindictive and prone to wild mood swings. Forget to take out the trash, and she will lock you out of the house (or to be more precise: she will lock you out of the U.S. manufacturing market with hefty tariffs on aluminum and steel), and if you don’t start picking up your slack in terms of the bills (or rather, defence spending as a percentage of GDP) she might follow through on threats to leave you on your own if you get into trouble.
Reconciling with an ex is always a gamble, but doing so after she’s spent four years plotting her revenge seems downright diabolical. Yet this is an arranged marriage – Canada has no say in the matter – meaning all we can do is get our own affairs in order and brace for whoever it is that ends up walking down the aisle.
The stakes are high for Canada on multiple fronts, the most obvious of which are economics and trade. We’re in a vulnerable position; Mexico has surpassed Canada as the U.S.’s largest trading partner, though the U.S. remains our largest partner, with $3.6-billion worth of goods and services still crossing the Canada-U.S. border every day. The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) is up for renegotiation in 2026, and Canada, as ever, is extraordinarily dependent on negotiations going well. (Our efforts to diversify trade in the past few years have mostly fallen flat; talks with Britain over a free trade deal broke down earlier this year, for example, over Canada’s stubbornness regarding its supply-managed dairy sector, among other factors.)
The U.S., meanwhile, is in a protectionist mood. President Joe Biden signed an executive order early in his tenure strengthening “Buy American” provisions in procurement for manufacturing industries, and he has expanded its scope over the past several years. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris (who, notably, was one of 10 senators to oppose replacing the North American free-trade agreement), is expected to largely stay the course. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, however, has already said he will impose a 60-per-cent tariff on goods from China and floated the idea of 10-to-20-per-cent tariffs on goods from all other countries. Without an exemption for Canada, Mr. Trump’s move would devastate our economy – a Scotiabank report from April estimated it would mean a 3.6-per-cent decline in GDP – effectively delivering a “Nixon shock” for the 21st century.
But trade isn’t the only area of concern for Canada. In 2017, Canada saw the effects of a relatively minor policy change under Mr. Trump’s administration at its own border with the U.S. In November of that year, the Trump administration ended the Temporary Protected Status of Haitians living in the U.S., ordering them to leave by 2019 or face deportation. Shortly thereafter, Canada began seeing migrants enter the country through irregular border crossings, including that at Roxham Road, which allowed migrants to claim asylum in Canada because of a loophole in the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA).
Though that loophole was closed in 2023 and irregular border crossings have slowed substantially this year, Mr. Trump’s promise of mass deportations – the largest in American history, for which he has threatened to use the National Guard to deport millions of undocumented immigrants – will undoubtedly send asylum-seekers heading for the Canadian border (despite amendments to the STCA, migrants who avoid interception and wait a few weeks can still try to claim asylum). And with Canada bracing for a refugee crisis of its own making, the addition of migrants fleeing Mr. Trump’s deportation orders would further exacerbate our already overburdened immigration, health and housing services.
A second marriage with Mr. Trump will be one of uncertainty. Will he help us defend Canadian interests in the Arctic, for example? Or will his administration go beyond the warnings of the Biden/Harris one, and leave Canada to fend for itself? What will it mean for our intelligence-sharing regimes if a notoriously loose-lipped and careless leader again occupies the highest office in the U.S.? Canada might soon have a partner that mistakenly sees us as a foe. It will be impossible to live without him, yet utter chaos to live with him, too.