Threats to Canadian democracy, Part 1 the obvious ones
Up stares, down stares, hard stares everywhere
First, a word to subscribers
Recently some subscribers asked how to pledge money to support my work. Knowing that the rest of you feel the same but are too shy to ask, here’s your answer. This isn’t “work” and if I took your money I’d owe you a post a week and I can’t be bothered. Besides, it’s for your own good.
For all the damage he’s done, Trump has prompted a deluge of political discourse. My inbox is brimming with posts I wish I’d written and others I can’t find time to read. Yours is too. If I have nothing to add, I shouldn’t bother you.
With that said, here I go. I doubt these next few posts will add to your knowledge. My hope is they collect the Trump threats in a convenient package so you can carry them around in your already overstuffed head.
The gathering storm
Risky business
Risk is best understood as the product of probability and consequence. A plane crash is low probability but highly consequential. Leaving your hat in the overhead bin is much more probable but much less consequential.
This formula is used by regulators, manufacturers, and airlines but it is universally applicable. Canadians who are keeping abreast of current affairs should familiarize themselves with it.
I think threats to Canada fall into three broad categories, presented in ascending order of risk:
direct action by the US,
the spread of authoritarian politics and MAGA-style tactics,
global instability.
Authoritarianism and instability are not just probable, they are occurring and the consequences are the end of democracy and end of the World respectively. They’ll keep until Part 2. Direct action by Trump is consuming our full attention at the moment anyway.
Direct action by the US
Broadly, there are at least three possible forms of direct action by the US :
Economic,
Military,
Political.
Trade war! What is it good for?
“War is merely the continuation of policy by other means.” - Carl von Clausewitz
Thus far Trump’s weapon of choice against Canada is tariffs. (We have been spared a visit from the Vances. Have we thanked the President even once?)
Canada’s response is targeted retaliatory tariffs.
Economists point out that retaliatory tariffs raise the cost of US goods for Canadian consumers and businesses – a self-imposed burden when what we need is a break. However, the rationale is in the name: trade war. This is not just about trade. This is war by other means.
Fortunately for us Trump, like his Secretary of Defense, announced his attack plans in advance: Canada is to become the cherished 51st state. So, instead of confusing arguments about economics, Canadians understand tariffs are not just the tip of the Trumpian ice berg they are the tip of the spear.
Amid continued threats, more than half of Canadians now think Trump is serious about (annexation) (54%). In January, just one-in-three (32%) felt this way. South of the border there has also been in increase in the proportion who feel Trump is serious, but to a smaller extent, rising from 22 to 34 per cent. - Angus Reid Institute 12 March 2025 51st State: Canadian resolve in saying ‘no’ continues, while a massive gap between Trump & Americans is revealed
Trump has always adhered to Neo-feudal economic theories and believes tariffs are good for the US. He may even believe his initial flapdoodle about Fentanyl and trade imbalances.1 But his end game is an updated “hands across the waters” strategy. Instead of WW2’s trans-Atlantic cooperation between Britain and the US and Canada, Trump’s version is trans-Arctic, between Russia and the US and that requires Canadaland. In View From the Top I quote Donald Trump's special envoy on Ukraine, Steve Witkoff,
"Who doesn't want to have a world where Russia and the US are doing collaboratively good things together, thinking about how to integrate their energy polices in the Arctic, share sea lines maybe, send LNG gas into Europe together, maybe collaborate on AI together?" https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62zm4eqvp7o
Collaborate with Russia on AI? Is that sensible? Really?
So what?
Only two things matter in this war:
1. Trump’s endgame is not bringing Canada to its knees economically. It’s bringing Canadians to our knees politically.
2. Politically, our knees are in our hands, not Trump’s.
The economic risk is high. We are past probability. We already have tariffs and Trump is promising more this Wednesday. The negative economic consequences for Canada are enormous.
However, I assess the immediate political risk as low. Trump likes carpet bombing. Canada prefers smart bombing because this war will be won in the US. As I said in Off the top of my head items for Canada’s To Do list:
Each 51st state jab strengthens our resolve. We will win because he’s shown us we have everything to lose and the US has nothing to gain.
Our resilience not only ensures our sovereignty it demonstrates to the US and the rest of the world Trumpism’s limits and earns Canada a leadership role in the fight against authoritarianism.
Military action is no longer unthinkable
Drone attack
Building on his bravura diplomatic debut in Munich, J. D. Vance and his spouse Usha (Mrs. Vance as he likely refers to her when she’s out of earshot.) dropped by Greenland uninvited to take a swipe at the Danes and make the Greenlanders an offer they can’t refuse:
(Denmark has) underinvested in the security architecture of this incredible, beautiful landmass … That simply must change. It is the policy of the United States that that will change.
What we think is going to happen is that the Greenlanders are going to choose — through self-determination — to become independent of Denmark. And then we’re going to have conversations with the people of Greenland from there. We do not think military force is ever going to be necessary.
Beautiful landmass you got here. Too bad you can’t rely on NATO’s security architecture and our 1951 Treaty2 so nothing bad happens to it.
Then he masterfully employed humour which he recently read is something Eathlings do to make a pointed statement more palatable:
We can’t bury our heads in the sand — or in this case in the snow — and pretend the Chinese are not interested in this landmass.
Hilarious.
The wrath of con
In case JD’s sophisticated oratory went over the heads of the locals, back in Washington his boss provided needed clarity,
We have to have Greenland. It’s not a question of, ‘Do you think we can do without it?’ We can’t.
Trump has not threatened Canada militarily but, if you can take one NATO member by force why not take two? They’re small.
I’m no expert on military matters so here’s a link to the March 18 edition of the Toronto Star which offers a who’s who of people who are experts and believe military action against Canada is now thinkable:
Opinion | No longer unthinkable: the U.S. invasion of Canada
At the same time it is important to note that there is little support in the US for annexing Canada and only 2% are willing to use military force.
That’s the good news. The bad news is Thomas Homer-Dixon has mapped out how Trump could go about justifying a military incursion to his MAGA supporters - the only people whose views he really cares about.
Mr. Trump will steadily escalate his demands on Canada, tying them to progressively broader political and territorial grievances. He’ll also increasingly question our country’s basic legitimacy as a sovereign nation, as he’s already started to do. A flood of lies from his associates, cabinet members, and the MAGA-verse will paint us as, at best, an irresponsible neighbour that’s not protecting America’s northern flank, or, at worst, an outright security threat, because at any moment we can restrict access to the energy, potash, water and other critical resources the United States needs.
Once we’re framed as an enemy, intelligence and military co-operation (for instance, under NORAD) will end. And at that point – with the U.S. military’s senior ranks purged of resistance and Trump loyalists in place – demands for territorial concessions, explicitly backed by the threat of military force, will be a simple next step. They’ll likely start with something small – an adjustment to the border in the Great Lakes, for instance – as a test of our will. But they won’t end there.
What’s the probability of this scenario? Ten per cent, 5 per cent, or 1 per cent? No one can say for sure. But it’s certainly not zero.
- “If you want peace, prepare for war—an ancient lesson Canada must remember” in the March 21, 2025 edition of the Cascade Institute’s newsletter
So what?
If we accept Homer-Dixon’s assessment, the probability of military action against Canada is low at the moment. The consequences are enormous. I doubt all of Canada becomes the 51st state. It would cost the Republicans the presidency and Congress. And they can’t say they weren’t warned,
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith gently deflected the 51st state references from Ben Shapiro at a fundraising dinner for PragerU by cautioning about how it would hurt the U.S. right wing's electoral prospects.
"That would be like adding another California to your electoral system, and [you] would never have a Republican president in the White House again," Smith told the audience. - CBC March 31 At Florida gala, Danielle Smith tried to laugh off 51st state rhetoric.
A more likely option is for portions of Canada to be gerrymandered into nearby states and the rest, together with Greenland, becoming territories like Puerto Rico - subject to the jurisdiction and sovereignty of the US but without a vote in Congress and federal elections, or the full protection of its Constitution.
So the overall risk is high by virtue of the consequences.
Political interference
Lots has been written already so I won’t spend a lot of space on political interference here. I will write about the long term social media sort in another post.
The immediate concern is election interference.
Trump can’t help interfering - ineptly. Obviously he’d had a dramatic effect on the relative standings of our parties even before the election was called. The Liberals were up 23-points as of a week ago. And if, as is touted, the tariffs expected this Wednesday turn out to be less than 25% on everything, he will have given Mark Carney, who spoke to Trump at his invitation on March 28, a further boost. Even Justin Trudeau enjoyed a bounce as he stood up to Trump in his final days in office.
Some social media election interference is visible and, with a bit of discernment, risible. Rosalie Barton telling Mark Carney how much she’d already made on Carney’s new crypto coin on a fake CBC website didn’t require much critical thought to see through but, judging from the comments, there’s less discernment than we might have hoped. Artificial stupidity seems to be enough for a goodly number.
At the official level, the Canadian Government has developed a Plan to Protect Democracy and process to deal with threats here. Elections Canada’s page on election interference is here. (I confess to not having read the Foreign Interference Commission’s final report.)
I just started subscribing to Get Fact. It seems promising but I can’t say for sure just yet. You may want to check it out.
So what?
To my way of thinking, the great risk to Canadian sovereignty is the fifth column of Canadians (To wit, D. Smith supra) who think Canada is broken and we’d be richer and freer if we were part of the US. I have faith in the integrity of our elections. Unfortunately the effectiveness the government measures to ensure confidence in elections is inversely proportional to the effectiveness of the steady downpour in popular media in the Ideas Era of the implicit assumptions of antidemocratic movements everywhere: governments are corrupt and wasteful, all democratic institutions are solely self-serving, and society is assailed by an assortment of “crisis” which only a strong man can set right..
PS
Last November 12th I set out to write a short essay on democracy in the Ideas Era.
It turned into a four poster ending on December 19 with this:
I had to go back and renumber the posts twice. I fear the same thing is happening here with the many threats Trumpism poses. I just scrolled back to the top and added Part 1 to the title of this post.
The 1951 Greenland Defense Agreement authorizes the United States to establish military bases in Greenland and grants the free movement of US troops and equipment within the territory.
This is a wonderful read —well-written, insightful, and with your wit shining through at just the right moments. I truly appreciate your thoughts, which, even when they feel a bit daunting, somehow have a calming effect on me. Hope all is well with you.
Doug, this is an outstanding post. It has it all, depth of thought, supporting evidence and wit. Well done my Learned Friend.