So Donald Trump has decided to annex your country

Somewhere, around Christmas, it became clear that Donald Trump wasn’t entirely joking about wanting to annex Canada. Here's what we can do.

Somewhere, around Christmas, it became clear that Donald Trump wasn’t entirely joking about wanting to annex Canada.

He shifted from simply denigrating Canadians by calling us the 51^st state to putting together a sales pitch to us that included lower taxes, stronger businesses and the umbrella of the U.S. military.

Not immediately finding us running to the ticker-tape store to get ready for his parade, he then pushed on to outright threats – specifically, the threat of using “economic force” to annex our nation.

And then, his ever-reliable proxies and supplicants – Donald Trump Jr., Elon Musk, Mike Lee, Ben Shapiro and the like – amplified this message, carrying it from the-parts-of-the-internet-that-we-know-we-should-clean-but-don’t onto the main feeds. Arming, in the process, millions of MAGA with dreams of manifest destiny.

Let’s be clear: Canada isn’t joining the United States. There’s no interest from Canadians and it’s hard to believe even this version of America has the appetite for the classic “invade to ‘protect’ an internal group from the government we wish to overthrow” gambit used by expansionists since antiquity.

But Trump, full of visions of adding stars to the flag, might just be deluded enough to think we’ll come begging to join if he inflicts enough economic pain. And he might be nuts enough to give it a shot.

Not great.

So here then, is a practical guide in how Canada can resist, reorient, and renew in the age of Trump.

STEP ONE: GET THROUGH THIS MOMENT OF CRISIS

Whenever you’re doing a restructuring – whether of a corporate division or a G7 nation – what matters most is time and money. Time provides optionality. Change costs cash.

Our integrated relationship with the United States took centuries to build. It won’t be changed overnight, it won’t be meaningfully changed this year. And a serious reimagining of our relationships with the world can’t happen if our GDP drops 10% - we’ll be far too busy dealing with more rudimentary challenges.

The first thing we need to do is extract ourselves from tariffs should the current 25% tariff threat prove more than just bluster:

• Get this country on one page and present a unified front.
  
  My bad, I promised a practical guide. Let’s move on.
  
  

• Define your opponent - it’s Trump, not the American people.
  
  The election was close and the ideas Trump presents are stupid. Don’t assume that Americans are on board with this madness.
  
  As I like to remind folk – even if you were to think only a quarter of Americans were good people, that’s still 84 million good people. They’re our friends and neighbours. Remember that, and remember that the worst case scenario for Canada is that Americans start to have actual reason to have beef with Canada. Don’t give them that, and plan responses accordingly. From that flows…
  
  

• The threat of broad-based retaliation is worth more than actual broad-based retaliation.
  
  Imagine we say we are going to stop shipments of oil and electricity.
  
  The threat, delivered in a “we really don’t want to but…” way to Americans, gives the sense things might be worse tomorrow. That hurts Trump. It makes people anxious and reasonably ask: “what is this guy doing?”
  
  Actual retaliation hurts Americans, who – we’ve defined – are not our enemy. Hurt people lash out. Be very careful about taking broad-based steps, which could turn Americans against us and make the worst outcomes more likely. Instead, limit retaliation in terms of target and – if it is necessary to go broad - time.
  
  

• Target Trump and his allies. They’re acting like kleptomaniacal oligarchs. Treat them as such.
  
  Cancel the Trump trademarks in Canada. Freeze Twitter and Tesla’s assets while Musk is backing annexation. Remove Fox News from the airwaves. Force Apple and Spotify to delist far-right podcasts pushing for our annexation. Refuse to accept Donald Trump’s ambassador. Expel any U.S. diplomatic staff that threaten Canadian sovereignty.
  
  Sovereign countries don’t put up with this shit, and while these actions hurt individual actors, they do not hurt Americans broadly.
  
  We have a playbook for oligarchs. Use it judiciously, but use it.
  
  

• Make any broader retaliations big, but time limited.
  
  Nothing will backfire worse than a retaliation nobody notices. We don’t wade into this one. If they do 25% tariffs, and we decide to retaliate, we do things Americans will notice, and notice immediately. There are only two obvious options: energy and electricity.
  
  Set a date when those things will be turned off for a set period of time, give notice, follow through. Conclude, repeat as necessary, but only as necessary.
  
  Now, you can’t just “turn off the taps”. That’s not how these things work. On oil, the federal government should tell the Alberta government this is likely to happen, and to work with industry to ease production, and to create additional storage capacity. That has the added benefit of broadcasting the threat and making some of the consequences (price, etc.) happen faster, because you have to know Danielle Smith will have things to say about that. On electricity, work with the system operators to be ready for what will no doubt be a very wild day.
  
  This is a very serious avenue. Energy is essential for a lot more than jobs and cheap gas. Don’t go into this half-hearted and don’t surprise Americans. Give them lots of time. Have an avenue where we immediately pause action if they pause their tariffs. Use the power of the eleventh hour. Have off-ramps.
  
  

• Fight randomness with randomness.
  
  Roll a 20-sided die each day to see if this is the day we announce we’re turning off the taps next week. Be nice one day and a lunatic the next. Keep Trump off balance, that’s what Trump does to us. It’s exhausting. Make him exhausted.
  
  

• Zag.
  
  There will be a big desire to match tariffs dollar for dollar. Remember, there’s a reason we like free trade agreements. They make us richer.
  
  They add tariffs? Eliminate tariffs – and not just from America. It will make goods cheaper for Canadians.
  
  They add visa requirements? Loosen ours – invite talent into this country.

  
  

STEP TWO: START EXTRACTING OURSELVES FROM THIS SITUATION

Outside of the threat of immediate 25% tariffs, Canada needs to get serious.

There’s one thing Trump isn’t wrong about. With our only neighbour – and best friend – being the world’s largest economy and the world’s most powerful military, we have had the luxury of floating about in a way that a serious nation should not.

Canada is a big country – bigger than we often act. We are one of the world’s largest economies, with the resources of the world’s second largest land mass. We have a GDP larger than Russia’s and still-not-insignificant alliances and diplomatic capital.

We have been dealt a hand almost any other nation would kill to have been dealt. But we’re playing it like amateurs.

If we want this country to be more than a historical footnote, we need to very intentionally focus on three things – all of which will take time to build or rebuild:

• Economic sovereignty.
  
  Diversify our trade relationships. Increase productivity. Take competitiveness seriously. Eliminate interprovincial trade barriers. Reduce red tape. Reduce regulation.
  
  Build things! Support major infrastructure projects. I love our national parks, but this country is not a national park. Smart development is possible.
  
  Increase training and education. Invest like crazy in post-secondary and knowledge creation. Take sensible steps to move up the value chain.
  
  

• Cultural sovereignty.
  
  Invest in cultural industries. Don’t eliminate the CBC – triple its budget and tell it to knock off the commercial stuff. Drown us in Canadian Heritage Minutes. Do that thing we all laughed about that Sheila Copps did in the 90s and send us all Canadian flags. Fund Canadian art. Fund Canadian music. Fund Canadian storytelling. Do it at a level not seen before.
  
  And celebrate this country. No country is perfect. But wave the flag, launch the fireworks, be proud of what we’ve built here. Be proud of what we can build if we continue down this path.
  
  

• Military sovereignty.
  
  Build our armed forces. Make additional military alliances. Strengthen partnerships. Increase the prestige of our armed forces and encourage more people to join them. If it wasn’t clear before November, I hope it’s clear now – this is an increasingly dangerous world. To protect ourselves, to protect our friends, to fight the good fight on the things that matter to us when we have to – it’s time to make the investments we’ve long put off making in our armed forces.

And while we don’t want to be wasteful – by all means, go into debt to do it all at once. This is not the time to sit on our wallet. Do I wish we’d taken better care of our finances for this rainy day? Yeah, but let’s not drown to avoid a VISA bill.

Hopefully along the way, Canadians can also find political unity. We need to act like a country again. We have to knock off this crypto-American folklore that we are a bunch of states that do things the American-way. That way leads to… America.

We’re a unique nation. We’re a collection of people who turned one of the most uninhabitable countries on earth into the greatest. I mean, honestly, folk – it’s a climate that is actively trying to kill us half the year. When an American says it’s freezing, they mean it’s below 0. When we say it’s freezing, we mean without a jacket you will die outside in twenty minutes.

We built something here, against odds. A generous and prosperous land. Where we look out for one another. Where the state provides the opportunity and you provide the outcome. Where we help you up when you stumble. And we did it by working together. We’ve got a lot of which to be proud.

SO, I GUESS WHAT I’M SAYING IS…

It should have been clear since – oh, 2016? – that America was becoming a less reliable ally. We’ve waited beyond reason, and we find ourselves in a moment of crisis.

Let’s get through that moment. Let’s be tough if we need to. But let’s not let this moment pass without learning something. Let’s take back control of our destiny and come up with a better plan for the next eight years than crossing our fingers and hoping 2028’s Kamala Harris wins an election we have little-to-no influence over.

Here we are. Now let’s start digging ourselves out of this mess.