Canadians have had two main reactions to President Trump’s trade wars and 51st-state threats. Collectively, we’ve responded to them like a declaration of war, as though it demanded nothing less than the mobilization of our entire society to confront the threat of a hostile foreign power. We watch Doug Ford dump a bottle of Crown Royal onto the ground, like the Boston Tea Party in reverse. We commit to spending hundreds of billions to renovate our military capabilities, wary that rhetorical threats of annexation might one day become real. Individually, we’ve experienced this moment more like a divorce. We throw out their things, cancel our vacations. We vow to buy only from ourselves, the economic equivalent of belatedly opening our own bank account. We create an entire movement around the idea of developing sharper elbows. We elect a prime minister who we hope will be the antithesis of Donald Trump: intelligent and boring. With our prudent, even-tempered financial mastermind at the helm, we tell ourselves that everything will be okay.
Is Canada Already the 51st State?
