How has Donald Trump’s return to the White House transformed the relationship between Canada and the United States? In this episode of International Horizons, John Torpey speaks with Randall Hansen, Canada Research Chair in Global Migration at the University of Toronto, about Mark Carney’s response to U.S. tariffs and annexation rhetoric, rising Canadian nationalism, and the challenges facing the two countries. They explore whether this crisis could become an opportunity for Canada to reduce its economic dependence on the United States and redefine its place in the world.

Transcript

John Torpey — 00:09

The world has reached what he called a rupture, not merely a transition, with Donald Trump’s reassertion of the logic, at least, of the Melian Dialogue, which, of course, famously read that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. The directness of Carney’s words took the world pleasantly by surprise. Canada is supposed to be polite, apologetic, passive, but Carney, who is known as a man who does not suffer fools gladly, advanced a more assertive Canada in response to Trump’s tariff demands and the ensuing trade war, and his intimations that Canada should become the 51st state of the United States. Canadians, long on friendly terms with their southern neighbor, reacted with puzzlement and discomfiture at the unprovoked attack on the country to the north. So what’s going on in Canada, and what can we expect from the Canadian-American relationship in the months to come? My name is John Torpey, and I’m a professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center and director of its Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies. We’re fortunate to have with us today Randall Hanson, a political scientist and historian who holds a prestigious Canada Research Chair in Global Migration in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He’s written extensively about global migration and about the history of World War II. Thanks for joining us today, Randall Hanson.

Randall Hansen — 01:50

Thanks for having me, John.

John Torpey — 01:51

Great to have you with us. As is typical of countries that are disproportionate in demographic size, Canadians know a lot more about the United States than we do about Canada, and that’s just a pattern that one finds. But it’s, I think, particularly true of the United States and Canada, where people in the U.S. barely know where Canada is. So that we have sort of a baseline for this conversation, how would you describe the relationship between the two countries historically?

Randall Hansen — 02:26

Well, backing up before 2016, I would say good. If I were to sum it up in two words, I would say it’s resentment and recognition: resentment of this hyperpower right next to us, which gives us relative little attention, which Canadians, with a certain degree of insecurity, I have to say, crave, combined with recognition that Canadian prosperity, above all, and also security, depend on that relationship with the United States, and even more than that, I think there’s a recognition that historically Canada has been rather lucky in that it was first coddled by being part of the British Empire and a close ally of the United Kingdom, and was until recently coddled by its close relationship with the United States. So having your bestie as the world’s hyperpower for a century and a half or so was actually a fairly privileged position to be in, and that now may be ending.

John Torpey — 03:30

Right. So, it occurs to me that I should perhaps mention that I lived and taught in Canada. I’m American by birth, as should be obvious, perhaps from my accent, but I lived and taught in Canada, in British Columbia, in Vancouver for five or six years before I returned to the United States and to the New York area where I’m now located. So, I have a certain familiarity with the country that most Americans simply do not have, and perhaps that gives me a somewhat better vantage point from which to address these questions. But you know, obviously, you know the country much better than I do, so it may be just a coincidence that he would come along at the same time that Trump came into office or returned to office, but let’s talk a little bit about Prime Minister Mark Carney, who’s become a major figure, I think, on the world stage, and indeed was part of what prompted me to want to do this interview. My understanding, as I said in the intro, is that Carney is known to be, or to have been at least, a guy who does not suffer fools gladly, as we say. How would you characterize him?

Randall Hansen — 04:47

No, I think that’s right. To pick up your first point, it wasn’t a coincidence at all. Indeed, he would probably not have been prime minister had President Trump not made fairly aggressive, at least rhetorical, and actually economic in terms of tariffs moves on the country. All the opinion polls suggested this country was heading for a right-wing populist by Canadian standards, conservative government under Poilievre, and to everyone’s surprise, Carney won the election, first a minority government, and now he has a majority. To your point in his personality, I don’t know him personally, but I would agree. And I think there’s two things to be said there. One is he’s from Western Canada, and this is self-serving because I am from British Columbia, but in my experience, the people in Toronto who were not a monument to banality when it comes to intervening in the public are either a) American who’ve come north or b) Western Canadian. So he fits the second category, and he was a central banker in the United Kingdom at a very difficult time, head of the Bank of England, Brexit above all, and what we saw there is he was not afraid to speak truth to power, taking on Rees-Mogg on the Brexit debate, for example, and that is carried over, I think, into his role as prime minister. But yes, it’s he’s been incredibly direct. There is a domestic payoff that we should talk about, so this isn’t all entirely noble. But as a result, Canada and the Canadian prime minister are getting a level of global attention that we’ve not seen since Pearson in the 1960s.

John Torpey — 06:45

Say a little bit more about who Pearson is, since most people listening to this won’t know who he is.

Randall Hansen — 06:51

Of course, fair enough. Most of my students would not either. So Lester B. Pearson was prime minister in the 60s, a liberal, won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating over the Suez Crisis, and he at the time was part of a group of countries, including Nordic countries, that pursued a model of cooperative international relations that got a fantastic amount of attention. So, Canada was sort of punching above its weight in the 1960s, and is so again

John Torpey — 07:26

You used another term, namely liberal, which means something different north of the border than it does south of the border. Maybe you could say a little bit about the history of the Liberal Party in Canada and its significance.

Randall Hansen — 07:40

Yes. Well, liberal means different things. In France, it means, of course, neoliberal, heartless economics. In the United States, it has something to do with pornography, and in Canada, it means progressive. But in the context of the party, the large liberal party of Canada has really dominated the country almost since Confederation, though the first prime minister was a conservative, but produced most of the prime ministers: Mackenzie King, Lester B. Pearson, Pierre Trudeau, Trudeau Sr. Justin Trudeau, and now Carney and others in between.

John Torpey — 08:19

Right, it’s had a kind of dominance in Canadian politics that is, I think, unfamiliar to us, partially because we have a sort of two-party system, and it’s back and forth over the decades.

Randall Hansen — 08:33

Absolutely, the equivalent is the Conservative Party in the Conservative and Unionist Party in the United Kingdom, which has similarly dominated since the reform acts of the of the late 19th century.

John Torpey — 08:47

Right. So, you also mentioned that his term, if it was a term exactly, I’m not sure, but his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer, I guess, right in the UK.

Randall Hansen — 09:04

governor of the Bank of England.

John Torpey — 09:06

Governor of the Bank of England. Sorry, but it was a high position in the economy of the UK, and I mean, only in a world that consists of you know the British Commonwealth, I assume, is that even possible. I mean, or could the British take anybody they wanted off the face of the earth and make him Governor General of the Bank of the UK?

Randall Hansen — 09:30

It’s a nein, as the Germans say. It’s a yes and no answer. The British, on the one hand, are incredibly open to foreign talent, and this is to their credit, it would have created a crisis had a foreigner and God help us an American ever been suggested as head of the Bank of Canada. That said, it’s also true politically, the fact that he was Canadian, part of the Commonwealth, made it less of a political issue than it would have been had he been American. At the time, the British were, in fact, and to their credit, rather excited about this. And Carney was, for most of that time, quite popular in the UK.

John Torpey — 10:12

Interesting. So, the British Commonwealth continues lives on. I mean, it reminds me of time when I was in South Africa. This is 20 years ago, and I was watching. I was doing some research, but I was watching the evening news and particularly the sports news. And what was the big news on the sports news on a Saturday night? The India Pakistan test match, which nobody in the United States would be able to explain to you what it was, much less you know, paid any attention to it. So that was a really revelatory moment for me.

Randall Hansen — 10:53

To jump in on that, no, absolutely. I think I’m the last generation that takes it seriously, probably on an emotional level, I don’t think it means much to my students, but I do get a kick out of it when I’m in Cape Town or Johannesburg or Hong Kong and I see Victoria this and Islington that. It all feels like a sort of piece of home. The way in which the Commonwealth was very much dead, though, was in Starmer’s absolutely pathetic, and Prime Minister Starmer, UK Prime Minister Starmer’s craven and pathetic answer to the question posed by a journalist—I think a British journalist—Trump has threatened to invade America. What do you have to say about this? And he said nothing, and that was an incredibly sad moment that a country, the United States, is talking about annexing a country that shares the same head of state, King Charles, with the United Kingdom, and the UK Prime Minister is silent. So, in that sense, the Commonwealth is a shadow of its former self.

John Torpey — 12:00

Right. All right. Now we’ve you sort of edged us into more recent developments, and you know my understanding is that Canadians have been shocked by Trump’s treatment of them during his second term, at least, and have responded to that treatment with outrage. How would you characterize your compatriots’ reactions to, among other things, what you were just hinting at? I think, which is the, you know, turning Canada into the 51st state of the United States.

Randall Hansen — 12:33

Well, I’ll begin by saying, and this will make me unpopular, that there’s a bit of a compliment in the 51st state rhetoric, which is to say, Trump, who is a racist and a xenophobe, has identified Canada as the one country sufficiently similar to America to be allowed to be part of us. So that gets forgotten here. But that’s not the real important issue. This threat of annexation is appalling, of course. I think there’s broadly three camps. One, there’s a section of opinion, a significant minority which is extremely anti-American and always has been, and their views have simply been confirmed here. The largest group in the middle might feel a kind of low level sense of resentment at times when the Americans pay no attention to us, but nonetheless recognizes the importance of this relationship above all economically. And there’s a small group of which I’m a part which has for years fought against parochial pathetic knee-jerk anti-Americanism, which, like all xenophobia, is intolerable. And I have to say, this is not our moment. But what I think that group is doing, and I suspect Carney is part of it, is saying this: Let’s not let a crisis go to waste. Given that this is happening, let’s use this as an opportunity to make changes that should probably have been made a long time ago, and that’s internal, getting rid of trade barriers between the provinces, which are absurd, and also trying to make oneself economically a bit less dependent on the United States and diversified trade and markets-that’s always a good thing. That can’t go very far, but I think what Carney’s doing is seizing the moment. And indeed, I haven’t had much traction with this argument. I think Carney’s actually exaggerating the extent of the economic threat to put through changes that need to be done and are otherwise very politically difficult to achieve. And why is that? Well, when you look at exports from Canada to the United States, the vast majority of them involve energy resources, oil, potash, and so on. And those are not being tariffed because Trump dares not do it. So at the moment, it’s only about 6% of exports that face a tariff. Some are quite nasty, like cars and steel. But for the global exports of the country, it´s rather small. But what Carney is saying is this is an existential economic threat. We need to make changes, and politically, that seems rather clever to me.

John Torpey — 15:24

And do you think that’s popular?

Randall Hansen — 15:26

Oh yes. Yeah, he has very strong support. All the polls show that he has. Yeah. So, despite the fact that the economy is not doing that well, that he hasn’t actually had a fantastic success in getting Trump to back down, he’s enjoying very strong public support.

John Torpey — 15:43

So basically, the situation, as you regard it is don’t let a good crisis go to waste, essentially.

Randall Hansen — 15:52

That’s my interpretation. It’s a minority one, I have to say, but that is how I am viewing it.

John Torpey — 15:56

Right, I see. All right, so there’s a parallel here in another case where, with regard to Greenland in particular, that you know there was considerable outrage in response to Trump’s demands for taking over Greenland. Yet in the end, his demands resulted in a deal that was, I think, somewhat quietly but apparently agreeable to all three sides of the discussion: the United States, Denmark, of which Greenland is a part, and Greenland itself, which insists on having a role in its own future, understandably. Did that surprise you? And what does it tell us about Trump’s demand that Canada should become the 51st state of the United States.

Randall Hansen — 16:42

It didn’t surprise me because Trump is a classic bully, and when you stand up to a bully, as we all remember from the schoolyard, that bully stands down. So, what we saw in the case of the European Union is when they caved rather pathetically on the tariffs and offered Trump his deal or 15% tariffs for the European Union. He was very quickly asking for more when they said this far and no further over Greenland and actually began moving troops to Greenland, though not many. Trump back down. So, the lesson for Carney is clear. Though it’s a very small country and could militarily obviously be crushed by the United States. The right thing to do with Trump is not to cave in, and we’re already seeing movement in the sense that now he’s suggesting that if Carney just gets on his knees and apologizes, then we might be able to move forward. So, the lesson is not a very profound one: stand up to a bully.

John Torpey — 17:54

Yes, well I think that’s in a way the signature policy that Carney has adopted is to simply say the only way you can deal with this, as you’ve just said, is you know treat him like a bully and stand up to him, and that’s what he’s been doing.

Randall Hansen — 18:10

And Trump almost made it easy because I think there would have been a free trade deal that would have forced Canada to accept concessions would have been in a short-term sense better for the U.S. though probably not a long-term sense better because tariffs never are. But when Trump said you can’t have your own trade deals and there won’t be any French language on product ship to Quebec, these were such open assaults on sovereignty over trade policy and over language policy, which is hugely emotional in Canada. Carney could not but walk away. So, Trump actually made it rather easy for him to do that, standing up as it were.

John Torpey — 18:58

Right. So, in the meantime, in the midst of all this talk of a 51st state and that sort of thing, Canada is having its own difficulties with itself. There was just a report in the Times the other day about elections in Quebec after more than a decade of relative quiet on the francophone front, the Parti Québécois has just won an election and proposed considering autonomy, though it seems as though support for that idea is rather low. And there will soon be, in the next couple of weeks, there will be an election, a referendum in Alberta concerning whether Albertans want to separate from Canada, so what do you make of all these noises about pulling out of the country, which are not exactly novel, but it’s not the sort of thing Americans sort of think. I mean, since the Civil War, there’s not been a lot of talk about secession of parts of the country.

Randall Hansen — 19:57

Yes, absolutely. I mean. There’s a big story about the absurdity of referenda and all of this, but we don’t have time to go into that. I would separate the two referenda a little bit. In the case of Alberta, that is much more like the referendum on Brexit, in that the governing party of Alberta, Wildrose has a problem with its right-wing flank that the premier, again rather cravenly, is trying to solve by not doing her job and standing them down, but rather holding a referendum that she’s fairly confident will go her way, i.e. Canada’s way. Alberta’s not leaving, partly because there’s no linguistic cleavage like Quebec, and partly Alberta is an economic powerhouse. It’s the Texas of Canada, and as a result, the migration there has been huge. So, whatever the kind of nativist Alberta Patriotic League is, it’s rather small. Quebec is very different. That goes back to the founding of the country, the defeat of the French by the British, and a linguistic cleavage, which, as you know, you are a Europeanist, makes nationalism much more easy to build. So, this has been here since at least the 1960s. It’s not going to go away. The Parti Québécois will keep asking the question until they get the answer that they want, though they I don’t think they’ll get it this time. And to your American analogy, they have no idea how good they have it. In many countries of the world, definitely Spain, as we saw, I suspect the United States, a threat to separate would be responded to with the police and mass arrests. But Canada goes through this every few years, tolerates a referendum. The answer is probably no. I suspect it will be this time. I’m giving a long-winded academic answer, but the short of it is, Alberta is a smaller problem generated by the premier there. Though Alberta, of course, has legitimate grievances. Quebec is a long-term structural linguistic cleavage, which is just part of the country’s fabric and always has to be dealt with.

John Torpey — 22:19

Right. No, it’s obviously a very different kind of situation that you know came about from the birth of the country.

Randall Hansen — 22:27

Yes.

John Torpey — 22:27

And is largely a linguistic issue, but of course, for a long time, was also a religious issue. But then, you know, that is to say, the Québécois were essentially Catholics, and the rest of the country was some kind of Protestants. And but then came the Quiet Revolution in the in the 60s. Catholicism kind of dribbled away, and it really hasn’t been the same kind of force in politics as it was then.

Randall Hansen — 22:57

No, that’s right, and it’s an interesting historical reversal. It was Catholics versus Protestants. The Orangemen had parades in Toronto, and from the 1960s, Quebec turned against the church and is now the most secular and liberal in the Canadian sense, small l liberal parts of the of the country. But the linguistic cleavage and language is essential to identity is fundamental, and it really is another country within a country. So, one solution to this problem would actually be a form of separation in which they remain part of a Canadian single market. So, the EU could be a model here, though there actually isn’t a single market in Canada. That’s a separate conversation, right?

John Torpey — 23:42

So, speaking of Europe, since we’ve now moved in that direction, there’s been this discussion that Canada will acquire may acquire some kind of status that doesn’t really exist, which I guess they’re referring to as an associate, although they’ve kind of climbed down from that idea too, but what do you make of the talk of Canada and sort of having a formal association with the EU?

Randall Hansen — 24:11

It’s political. I mean, as you said, the concept was meaningless. There was a huge amount of excitement. My inbox was full when this announcement was made, but membership of the European Union in any meaningful sense, as the British discovered the hard way, involves acceptance of free movement of capital, services, goods, and people. It involves allowing the Commission to negotiate your free trade deals. None of this is going to happen. Canada will remain part of a trade zone with America because of geography and part of a regulatory framework, which is American, which is another problem. So, what does it mean? Well, it’s a statement of solidarity, which I think is meaningful. It allows, I think Carney, a structure, a framework, an umbrella to do other things which are real, which is so expanding trade within the existing free trade agreement with the European Union and cooperating on defense in particular. So, Canada is part of EU defense agreements, where procurement, the purchase of Canadian military equipment, is now possible, Siemens was chosen for the production of Canadian submarines. So that associate membership, which isn’t really a thing, allows meaningful cooperation to carry on, and culturally, I think it’s good and bad. On the one hand, it allows Canadians a sense that they are controlling their own destiny, and a lot of what Carney is trying is doing is trying to create a sense of control over factors he no one can really control. What I worry about is that it’s a Canadian search for another sugar daddy, which is to say, there was the British Empire, and then there was the American Empire, the American hyperpower, and now it’s the European Union, which is to say, thank God someone else is going to look after us: our rich uncle. What the country needs to think of itself more as something like a Singapore, which is alone internationally and has to find its way.

John Torpey — 26:29

Interesting. I mean, one of the things that prompted me to ask you to do this interview was this kind of sense that I’ve had that, and it’s very much about Carney, that you know Canada is having a moment, as we like to say, and I wonder whether you perceive it that way as well, and whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, or it’s just a kind of thing that will fizzle. And I was reminded of this again in terms of the upcoming Montreal International Security Summit, which puts Canada once again kind of in a prominent place on the world stage. So, how long is this moment going to last?

Randall Hansen — 27:09

Yeah, that’s hard to know. But, is there a moment? Oh, absolutely. That is that is real. As we said at the beginning, Canada is punching above its weight in a way that it’s not for decades, is being spoke of as a middle power on par with France, Germany, or the United Kingdom, which frankly, it isn’t. And the prime minister seizing the moment. Now, this is our second prime minister that gets global attention. The last one was Justin Trudeau, but he got it because he was good-looking and offered a nice selfie and was young. This prime minister is getting it on the basis of bravery, competence, and a recognition. And he’s right here that the world, as America is withdrawing from it, becoming a stabilizing force. I don’t think MAGA is going to go away in two years, though Trump hopefully will. And the countries need to look for other associations, and there’s no reason why a rich country of 40 million people can’t be, can’t be one of them. So, all of this attention, there’s a bit of a Carney factor here, and he won’t last forever. But the structural change of the search for variable geometry of alliances, as he says, I think, that is going to continue. And if Ottawa plays its cards correctly and invests enough money, there could be some real change.

John Torpey — 28:39

Okay, interesting. Thanks for taking the time. I want to thank Randall Hanson of the University of Toronto for joining us to discuss developments in Canada and in the Canadian-U.S. relationship. Look for International Horizons on the New Books Network and remember to subscribe and rate International Horizons on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. I want to thank Sebastian Canseco Ibarra for his technical assistance, as well as to acknowledge Duncan McKay for sharing his song “International Horizons” as the theme music for the show. This is John Torpey saying thanks for joining us, and we look forward to having you with us for the next episode of International Horizons.