It’s early spring in Canada, four months after US President Donald J. Trump announced he would be imposing a 25 percent tariff on Canadian goods. A few days later, he offered to make Canada the 51st state. To say that many Canadians have not taken this well would be an understatement. A good portion of us appear to have lost our minds.

　　Exhibit A: On February 20, a Member of Parliament introduced a petition to revoke the citizenship of tech billionaire Elon Musk, whose mother is from Saskatchewan. He has “engaged in activities that go against the national interest of Canada,” the preamble states. “He has used his wealth and power to influence our elections,” and “become a member of a foreign government that is attempting to erase Canadian sovereignty.” By the time of writing, the petition had gained almost 375,000 signatures—nearly the highest since the e-format was introduced in 2015.

　　Exhibit B: A few days prior, an Edmonton, Alberta, resident launched a petition to rename Wayne Gretzky Drive. The Great One was guilty of the crime of being “seen wearing a white ‘Make America Great Again’ hat at Trump’s inauguration party.” The petition gathered steam as further grievances rolled in. Canadian sports writers piled on too, now over alleged signs of Gretzky’s disrespect for Team Canada when serving as honorary captain at the 4 Nations Face-Off final in Boston.

　　The fervent accusations may seem curiosities. Sadly, though, we have been there before. Trump’s tariffs and offer to become the 51st state have breathed new life into an old Canadian founding myth of a manned garrison against the United States. Not all Canadians share it and there are other myths at work—yet the garrison is dominant, and has potential to destroy our country.

　　By founding myths, I mean that well of archetypes political leaders draw on for images to shape a future they present as continuous with a deep past. At his inauguration address, for example, President Trump promised to usher in a “new Golden Age” for America on January 20, 2025, a day when “sunlight is pouring over the whole world.” Whether becoming an AI leader or energy powerhouse, the Golden Age myth supplies an old vessel for Trump’s new wine.

　　The foundational myths on the northern side of our long border may be less exalted, more restrained, yet they are still in play—and worth examining when considering Canada’s future. Sustained explorations of them appear in Canadian Conservative Political Thought, which I previously reviewed for Law Liberty. An early, likely dominant, myth presents Canada as a United Empire Loyalist garrison, inherently—even irrationally—hostile to the American project. The second is a robust northern nation, that creation of steely, ambitious statesmen who prefer a dominion under the British Crown to a republic on the American model. The third myth is of the humble, productive homesteader, who casts a more favourable eye on the United States and even regards the garrison myth itself as a threat.

　　They have relevance in considering Canada’s future after Trudeau, and so we review them in turn. 

　　In the Garrison: “Team Canada”

　　The above-mentioned volume on Canadian conservatism was rife with discussions of Canada as a collective unity rooted in a shared allegiance to the British Crown. The United Empire Loyalists, those refugees who endured great hardships to remain in British North America after losing the Revolutionary War, made their way north to establish their lives. Their experience resonated beyond the original Loyalist settlements in Quebec, Ontario, and the Maritimes—to the point where many assume it defines all of English Canada. The loyalist experience took on hues of High Tory noblesse oblige and later, of Red Tory socialism. Following Northrop Frye, Richard Avramenko uses the military image of the garrison to characterize it, stressing there is “little room for dissent, never mind sedition” within the garrison. 

　　The problem is that many Canadians feel most at home within the garrison walls.

　　The image calls to mind the past few months. “Every Canadian should be deeply offended,” quipped former Quebec premier and failed federal Conservative Party leadership candidate Jean Charest, offering Trump’s “51st state” statement as a “wake-up call.” Outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau could not resist tweeting his outrage: “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.” That was January 7, the day after he prorogued Parliament for three months to launch an extended Liberal leadership race in response to a tariff emergency.

　　Yet the prize for garrison-inspired rhetoric goes to Chrystia Freeland, variously the finance minister, foreign minister, and deputy prime minister under the Liberal government. Speaking at the February Liberal leadership debate, she asserted that “the U.S. is turning predator.” She then pledged to engage Canada’s Nordic and European NATO allies—England and France with their nuclear weapons—and our Asian “democratic partners” to safeguard Canada’s security at a time “when America would be a threat.”

　　Western Standard editor Nigel Hannaford accurately adduced the core problem:

　　But whatever else Freeland had to say last night, the idea that somebody’s nuclear weapons—or any weapons—would have any part in a discussion over anything between historic allies engaged in a trade dispute, shows a staggering departure from reality. What does this woman read in bed before she goes to sleep?

　　Leadership contender Mark Carney flirted with a muted version of the same rhetoric. His March acceptance speech as Liberal Party leader and de facto prime minister referred to a “time of great peril for our country.” If the Americans succeed, he stated, they “will destroy our way of life,” including multiculturalism, bilingualism, indigenous rights, and universal healthcare. Notably, the enemy includes Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre: Carney describes him as a divider and capitalist ideologue “who worships at the altar of Donald Trump.” 

　　Carney is a well-known globalist, serving as United Nations special envoy on climate change after heading up the central banks of Canada and England. For decades, in fact, successive Canadian governments have poured progressive, internationalist content into the garrison mould. Time was when the larger unit to which Canada must cleave was the British Empire; now, some are floating Canada joining the European Union, an idea 44 percent of the population supported in a recent poll.

　　And yet life within the progressive garrison has grown grim this past decade—a reality the Liberals cannot escape. Canadian productivity and living standards have tanked. Nationally, our per capita GDP is equivalent to that of poor southern states. Housing costs have soared together with immigration rates. All the while, Trudeau’s minority government skates through successive ethics violations, with some Liberal parliamentarians even cited as possible witting beneficiaries of Chinese electoral interference in a June 2024 parliamentary committee report.

　　And the prospects for a change? The past two years, the Conservatives had led in the polls by double-digits. Then Trump began referring to the prime minister as “Governor Trudeau” and Canada as the 51st state and the garrison walls went back up. The problem is that many Canadians feel most at home within them. This holds especially in vote-rich Ontario, where a poll showed a “dramatic rebound” in perceptions of Justin Trudeau’s ability to manage Canada’s relationship with the United States after “Team Canada” pledged retaliatory tariffs.

　　This unfortunate reality is not lost on Pierre Poilievre. The Conservative Party leader may best be known stateside for a clip of him casually munching on an apple as a reporter accuses him of “taking a page out of the Donald Trump book.” Now, though, he is eager to avoid any comparison with Trump, celebrating Canada as a distinctly northern, non-American nation.

　　The Nation-Builder: “Canada First”

　　As America prepares its new Golden Age and the reigning Liberals fortify their garrison, the Conservative Party of Canada burnishes an alternative founding myth. “We are mild-mannered and made of steel,” Poilievre told a packed “Canada First” rally on the sixtieth anniversary of the maple leaf flag. He invoked Canada’s first prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald, who ensured the completion of a national railroad joining the country in the 1880s. Poilievre vowed to do the same for pipelines moving oil from west to east.

　　Though an appreciative friend and neighbour, the northern nation is no mere imitator of the American republic. Poilievre stressed that Canada’s leaders have been “deliberately resisting American annexation for hundreds of years.” He cited Macdonald directly, who promised “a great, a united, a rich, an improving, a developing Canada—instead of making us a tributary to American laws, American railways, American bondage, and American tolls.” Offering Canada as its best trading partner, Poilievre pledged to incentivize provinces to remove interprovincial trade barriers and support bold national projects. With a renewed consciousness of its power, Canada will “unleash” abundant natural resources, rebuild our national defense, defend our border, recriminalize hard drugs, and prosecute crime.

　　The rolling moral panics behind the progressive garrison could yet tear this country apart.

　　The Conservatives reject the Liberal post-nationalist experiment, which they see to have broken the country over the past nine years. Yet they also drag their feet in areas that would be central to a nationalist platform: addressing runaway immigration rates and illegal migration, for example, or getting serious about rooting out foreign interference in Parliament. The Conservatives remain supporters of Ukraine and support retribution in tariffs. In crucial respects, as Canadian journalist Rupa Subramanya noted recently in The Free Press, there is little daylight between Poilievre’s “Canada First” and the Liberal “Team Canada.”

　　One could truly despair if it weren’t for a third founding experience with contemporary resonance. Represented by the Western provinces—and, especially, Alberta—the relevant myth here is the homesteader.

　　The Homesteader: “Alberta Strong and Free”

　　The friction of Ottawa and the Prairie provinces is largely based on arguments around transfer payments and jurisdiction over natural resources. Yet it also goes deeper: as Rick Avramenko points out in “Of Homesteaders and Orangemen,” the contrast of the homesteader and central Canadian garrison-dweller is stark. Her defining experience is freedom—the negative freedom of immigrants fleeing the despotic regimes of Europe to live under the expansive Prairie land and sky. Premiers Danielle Smith in Alberta and Scott Moe in Saskatchewan could be seen as current bearers of that myth. The two provinces they reprent produce and export commodities—grain and beef, oil and gas, uranium and potash.

　　Understanding confederation in the terms set out in the British North America Act of 1867, Alberta and Saskatchewan passed laws protecting their jurisdiction in 2022 and 2023, as federal Liberals were pushing to regulate the oil industry.With the federal Conservative party, Moe and Smith see the federal cancellation of several pipeline projects as responsible for Canada’s high dependence on the United States for oil exports. Early in the tariff discussions, “Team Canada” singled out the oil and gas sector to retaliate against American tariffs. Premier Smith, who rejected the proposal, was isolated among the premiers.

　　Of the three mythic images, only the homesteader is self-consciously regional, yet it has the greatest natural affinity with American populism and republicanism. The political cultures are more similar—and downstream, so are the policies. Before Trump drew attention to the fentanyl issue, Smith had decried the ravages of hard drug use on residents of the province. Hers was the first province to take on gender policies for children and an inquiry into her government’s handling of COVID-19. The only Canadian leader invited to Trump’s inauguration, Smith lobbied hard for diplomacy to combat American tariffs and was the first to tighten surveillance at the border.

　　Hers is a distinctive defense against arrows flying over the garrison. “Danielle Smith is Alberta’s shield,” a United Conservative Party newsletter assured supporters after she vocally refused to offer retaliatory tariffs on oil and gas tariffs as a bargaining chip for Canada. “Every day, she takes on the Laurentian elites, the Ottawa insiders, and their media allies who sneer at our province and our way of life.”

　　The homesteader myth is broadly compatible with nation-building, though it emphasizes interprovincial cooperation on large projects. Smith does foresee clashes with net zero enthusiast Mark Carney assuming power federally, however, pointing to his long record of initiatives aimed at killing oil and gas projects early, at the capitalization phase. “Any politician now who aspires to lead this country has to realize that certain things are not on,” she stresses in a recent interview—such things as punishing one region in the name of a “green ideology,” pitting provinces against each other, or imposing a harsh carbon tax on those simply trying to afford groceries.

　　What Now?

　　What indeed? We have three founding myths in play; two of them are incompatible—and we have not even touched on the founding experiences of Quebec or Indigenous peoples. To the list of things “not on” geo-politically, we might add Canada’s pursuit of alliances with such hostile foreign powers as China, which would certainly be objectionable to the United States.

　　Some things are no longer on at an individual level either. Though one won’t find mention of it in traditional media, social media posts suggest that those skeptical of Team Canada’s newfound patriotism or—God forbid who express openness to joining the United States—are finished with being cast as traitors. A sizeable minority bristles at “Team Canada’s” demand to boycott American goods, which recalls the performative theatre of Canada’s COVID regime. As for our opening exhibit, the clamour for Wayne Gretzky to explain where he stands on Trump gained this response from fellow hockey legend Bobby Orr:

　　How fickle can people be, when someone who has given so much time and effort to Canadian hockey is treated in such a way. Listen, we all have our personal beliefs as they pertain to things such as religion and politics. Wayne respects your right to such beliefs—why can’t you respect his?

　　Why indeed? The rolling moral panics behind the progressive garrison could yet tear this country apart. A recent poll found that almost 50 percent of young men in Canada would take on American citizenship if offered. Alberta and Saskatchewan will fight back if the federal Crown continues intruding on their jurisdiction. And if a new federal government were to take drastic unilateral action, any province would have recourse to the federal Clarity Act, 2000, which sets out the process by which it could secede. As it is, Albertas government has just introduced the Critical Infrastructure Defence Amendment Act of 2025, which aims to head off an emissions cap on oil and gas production proposed by Ottawa.

　　The threats are both internal and external, in other words. As with his father, the elder Trudeau, Trudeau the younger has taken a wrecking ball to this country. Reconciling old myths and new policies sets prudent leadership at a premium where it has been absent for almost a decade. Whatever the avenue, the return to reality will be long, costly—and inevitable.