Join with Europe and build CANZUK

Since the shotgun wedding of World War Two and the need to get capability to the Brits, Canada has been strongly bound up with the United States and, ultimately, American interests. More than 50% of foreign-controlled assets are now American and almost one million Americans live in Canada. There’s much more to it, of course, but the mess for Canada during the Trump crisis has been on its way to us for decades.

        In response to the various moves by Trump and whoever is running him, Canada is shifting toward Europe to a degree that may reflect 2025 campaign rhetoric, but will surely change things for the long-term. It’s hard to imagine that Canadian industry would lurch back with each “liberal” US administration and then shift away again with each … the word “conservative” hardly works here.

        Stability may be hard to find as a minor partner with Europe and so hugely increasing self-sufficiency should be a second new direction. Canada has a measure of self-sufficiency in key areas like food and energy, and we need only move those across the country from their production areas. Much of our import is already international and some of that should be replaced, too. In the long-term, environmental impacts of global trade must factor in. Deeper exchanges with Nordic and smaller European countries should already be embraced. European stability may to some extent depend on stable partners like us.

CANZUK, a move to bring Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom more strongly together – including in relation to Trump Administration security failures – is more and more supported among the folks we could call realists and could well be a very good idea for Canada in the long-term. Although co-operation with far-off places is much more awkward than that with the United States, stability and real partnering are always the foundation.

The United States has in fact bullied Canada for a very long time, and now could well be the time to do something significant about that.

        One thing that does not make sense is to continue to fight with “big dummy” regimes – since Nixon? – and to become more and more like them. We’ve already had our own share of goons in government and we don’t need any more.

Help ordinary Americas

At the same time as we’re moving away formally, there are the “lived” or social connections. Those include everyday life and business exchanges with ordinary Americans who, even if they voted for the Trump thing, are not propagating the attack on allies and progressives.

        The American Experiment is surely still in there somewhere.

        Of particular concern are the academic, censoring, DEI and media assaults, legal and otherwise, and the fallout for American democracy that may follow. Funding for PBS and NPR, for example, may be cut or qualified and public broadcasting may scramble for donors. Although it’s an extraordinary move, Canada should actively and financially support public interest and alternative information and education systems in the United States. Once those are gone, restoring them may be very difficult. Corporates, for example, have run from DEI and it could be a lot of work to drag them back.

        The Europeans should be encouraged and supported in also helping to maintain or restore institutions like the Voice of America or AP. And it may become necessary to add American matters to that Voice of Europe programming.

        Emergency immigration or refugee support should be offered to American intellectuals, scientists, academics, publishers at a formal and public level, in order to send a message as much as to assist individuals and families. The Democratic Party and the liberals or progressives in the American body politic should know that Canada is, in yet another emergency, there for them.

        America could be considered under attack, and not simply from “populists” or corporates hunting lower taxes.

        If nothing innovative and substantive is done, it will only get worse, and let’s remember it will continue after Trump himself is gone. This mess is channelling reaction all the way back to the Sixties.

Adopt long-term and big picture policy

The election cycle in Canada isn’t four years but it is a real framing. Governments, especially the feeble-minded ones, act to get re-elected and sometimes not to ensure the well-being of Canadians. Nonsense payments of small amounts to voters just before elections, to illustrate, marred both the recent Trudeau and Doug Ford (Ontario) campaigns. Meanwhile, the environment and vulnerable persons face growing crisis.

        The Canada we need is one that acts for well-being and sustainability, along with economic stability and various forms of security. Canadian governments should come together more firmly and should reverse the difficulty of decentralization that makes of each province a little country left in near-secret to its own devices when it comes to health, education and much more. Canada’s performance in areas such as innovation has been weak, while our moving of raw materials and energy to the south has been significant.

        An open public planning process, along with active construction of public interest information systems, should accompany re-design of Canadian services and emphasize well-being and sustainability as the new self-sufficiency is put into place. International and United Nations standards should be made plain for Canadians and should be adopted or even strengthened as facilities are created or changed.

        The real situation facing seniors, the vulnerable and people with disabilities, for instance the minimal accessibility now in place, should be treated in the media as a real indicator.

        The culture war bubbles along just under the surface in some places and it costs the rest of us a great deal. When it came to power, the Doug Ford government in Ontario, to name one, dropped “disability” from the top of any portfolio and moved accessibility to the new Ministry for Seniors and Accessibility, more or less ignoring the “problem.”

Build well-being

In market economies capability, especially the local kind, results from entrepreneurship and investment. Intervening in that process is often resisted and misunderstood. “Freedom” reduces to “economic freedom” and is fundamental in the conservative canon.

        People can become factors of production or surplus to requirements or a cost of doing business. Welfare programming in Canada has often worked this magic, especially with “corporate” governments in place like the various Conservative (and sometimes Liberal) regimes in the West or in Ontario.

        Building well-being, if rarely up to the international standard, is something we can accomplish and something we need to learn well from nations including parts of the United States. The Nordic countries of course have been successful in this area.

        Public housing that works, renewed federal and provincial programming available at the heart of the community, changes toward the responsible in the charitable sector, self-direction organizations for the vulnerable and people with disabilities, community food programs that include co-op gardens, modest adult education, practical mental health, drug abuse prevention and much more often seem to be in place – actual reporting on the state of any community from the bottom up is minimal – but can be left to local politics and that is up to local interests.

        With no federal programming and federal standards on the ground, gaps and errors and outright deception are rife. A solid example from the local area here is a social housing system with 1,500 units in which up to 400 are occupied by people who need supportive housing – never mind violent occupants next door to the most vulnerable – and the absence of public awareness of this fact.

        Things working on paper is how it works.

        We might ask what happens when this “paper working” applies to more and more of a population. Except of course democracy has recently found that out in its American adventure.

Start working on the next democracy

Canada includes a few “innovative” governments, such as the one in Nunavut. A more consensual and consultative process thrives there.

        In “direct” or participatory democracy and “deliberative” democracy, the voter is comparatively empowered and informed. Where today most of us vote for parties and personalities, in political systems we might call progressive but could also call realist, people have greater ownership and understanding. The result is more productive and less reactive, continuous and stable, and less prone to manipulation.

        While Canada in general is not building a future democracy today, it’s predictable that most jurisdictions will grow something of this kind, even if only in the wake of major disaster and a real faltering of the rule of interests that is the party system.

        Canada could make a head start now, in part to help the millions of Americans who are entering a crisis in 2025 that may be very deep and might result in a growed-up need for this ability to renew.