Jon Barnier leaves his home in the Ottawa suburbs every morning and makes the journey across the border to his job as a medical technician in New York state.
He had never dwelt on the subtle cultural shift at play as he darted between Canada and the US, but in recent weeks it has become unavoidable.
“I’ve started to find myself playing up how I pronounce certain words, you know, [to] really remind people where I’m from,” said Barnier, 44, one of thousands of Canadian healthcare workers making a similar daily commute. “It does suddenly feel a lot more tribal.”
At the Ogdensburg-Prescott crossing, cars with Ottawa number plates sport freshly printed “Not for sale” bumper stickers featuring the maple leaf flag.
Much like Britons, Canadians tend to be uncomfortable flaunting any sense of patriotic pride. But Donald Trump’s imposition of unprecedented tariffs on Canadian exports and threats to turn their country into the 51st US state have prompted an unlikely pivot to jingoism.
Ice hockey fans have booed the US national anthem at games, consumers are boycotting American exports such as Netflix and substituting Colgate toothpaste, Kellogg’s cereal and Californian wine with domestic alternatives. In coffee shops around the capital, baristas have renamed the Americano the “Canadiano”.
A survey for the Quebec Tourism Industry Alliance reported last week that half of Quebeckers who had booked a trip to the US this year have cancelled or were considering doing so. Even middle-class Montrealers, who have long defended their French heritage, are flying the red and white flag.
“Canadians go on holiday to the United States, our sports teams play there, we study at their universities,” said David Skok, founder of the popular Canadian economic news site The Logic. He pointed out that 90 per cent of Canadians live within 100 miles of the frontier, once described as “unguarded” in testament to their closeness. “The idea that this relationship was not solid is deeply painful.”
The national soul-searching comes at a crossroads moment for Canada. Its prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who has for the past decade been the country’s face to the world, will be replaced as Liberal leader on Sunday as the party votes for his successor ahead of a general election.
Just weeks ago, the Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre — seen as Trump-lite for his Maga-aping love of deregulation, keenness to “drill, baby, drill” and anti-immigration rhetoric — seemed poised for a landslide victory as voters soured on Trudeau’s brand of progressivism. But Trump’s return to power has flipped the script.
The US president’s 25 per cent tariffs on tens of billions of dollars of Canadian goods — imposed and then partially paused for a month — threaten to devastate the economy in Alberta, which sends gas and oil to Texas and Louisiana for refining, as well as Saskatchewan’s potash business. Quebec, meanwhile, supplies hydroelectric power to swathes of the US east coast. Car parts can cross the border linking Ontario with the US manufacturing hub of Detroit, Michigan, as many as seven times before ending up in the final product.
When Trump first proposed the annexation of his northern neighbour, Canadians laughed it off as bombast. But after he went through with his tariff hike, that laugh took on a palpable unease.
Last week, Kristi Noem, Trump’s homeland security secretary, visited the Haskell Free Library in both Quebec and Vermont — the cultural centre straddles the Canada-US border — and in a bizarre stunt repeatedly stepped over the taped boundary marker on the floor, shouting “USA No 1” on the American side and “the 51st state” on the Canadian.
“Part of Trump’s magic trick is to keep us all guessing,” said Michael Ignatieff, a former Liberal Party leader. “But the trap we fall into is thinking he’s just a trickster.”
Trudeau has been warning privately that Trump is serious, eyeing Canada’s critical mineral reserves and full, borderless continental integration.
“The country is facing an existential threat to its independence, I don’t think there’s any other way to take it,” said Ignatieff.
It was enough to prompt Robert Bothwell, a historian and the author of Your Country, My Country: A Unified History of the United States and Canada, to wonder aloud whether Canada could face an “Anschluss in North America” — a reference to Adolf Hitler’s annexation of Austria in 1938. “You could say it’s crazy, because it is,” he said. “Will it succeed? I don’t think so, although Trump has shown that he knows no bounds.”
There is a saying in Canada that “the most boring wins”, but boredom is no longer a luxury its politicians can afford. Ignatieff believes the question of who is best to take on Trump is “the only one on the ballot”.
Poilievre, 45, is a populist who has vowed to fight “woke culture” and called for lower taxes and a return to “common-sense politics”. But he has now had to pivot to promising the country would “bear any burden and pay any price” to protect its sovereignty.
The problem for him is that he has already been embraced by many in the Maga (Make America great again) world: figures such as Bill Ackman, the Trump-backing billionaire hedge-fund manager, and the popular conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro.
Liberal Party attack ads feature a split-screen of Poilievre and Trump using near-identical phrases, from “fake news” to “everything is broken” and “the radical left”. “How can you speak for Canada when you sound like Donald Trump?” the ad asks.
“Even his new slogan ‘Canada First’ makes you immediately think of ‘America First’,” said Patricia Martin, a 52-year-old assistant in an accounting firm, who has voted both Liberal and Conservative in past elections but this time will “wait and see” how things pan out in the coming months.
Liberals are hoping the unexpected swell in national unity might help them claw their way back from a 25-point deficit and pull off one of the greatest comebacks in Canada’s political history.
Trudeau has been leading the charge. When Trump broached the idea of demoting him to governor of a 51st US state over dinner at Mar-a-Lago in November, the soft-spoken premier reportedly smiled meekly and brushed it off.
But Trudeau, who is often described as the living embodiment of “Canada-polite”, has since offered a much more robust defence, calling on patriots to “forgo bourbon” and cancel holidays to “Florida or Old Orchard Beach or wherever”.
After the tariffs came into effect he issued a rare direct rebuke of Trump, scolding “Donald” for doing a “very dumb thing” — and Canadians wondered: where has this Trudeau been?
“We have always cast our patriotism in the shade because we lived next door to the most nationalistic country in the world, but it’s always been there and, politically, you ignore it at your peril,” said Ignatieff.
The two favourites to replace Trudeau as Liberal leader have proven economic records. The frontrunner, Mark Carney, is the former governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England — the first foreigner to lead the British central bank since it was founded in the 17th century — while Chrystia Freeland is the former finance minister and Trudeau’s deputy, who in a previous life wrote for the Financial Times.
“Canada faces one of the most serious crises in our history. I know how to manage a crisis and I know how to build strong economies,” said Carney, 59, who steered Britain through Brexit and Canada through the 2008 financial crisis, at the leadership debate last month.
Carney has little political experience, which previously would be disqualifying but is now a boon if the next leader is to go toe-to-toe with a brash businessman who only understands deals.
A survey found 41 per cent of respondents believe Poilievre would “do what Trump demands”. By contrast, just 17 per cent thought the same of Carney.
Polling shows a Carney-led party would boost support by six points to 37 per cent, putting it in a dead heat with the Conservatives.
Both parties recognise that Washington and Ottawa are going through a conscious uncoupling, which even if repaired will take years to come back from.
Richard Bisaillon, a political science professor at Concordia University in Montreal, pointed out that after Canada joined the Commonwealth in 1926, Sir John Macdonald’s National Policy forced Canadians to buy British, when cheaper and better US goods were available below the 49th parallel. After the Second World War, with the decline of the British Empire, efforts were made to pivot towards the rising economic star to the south.
Canada used free trade deals with the US, dating back to the 1960s, to help vault its $2 trillion economy into the Group of Seven leading industrial countries. Nearly 80 per cent of Canadian exports now go to the United States.
At least one member of parliament representing the border districts of Ottawa has been busy making plans beyond the current trade war, aiming to move Canada away from dependence on the US.
“Nothing guarantees that even if we get through this war, Trump will not come back to the fray,” warned Brian Masse, a centre-left MP. “So it is urgent to move forward with free trade agreements with other countries, learn from American protectionism, and do something more than extract and send our natural resources out of this country.”
Cross-border workers such as Barnier, meanwhile, are now reconsidering working in an increasingly hostile country. “Trump may have done Canada a favour,” he said. “We have always just defined ourselves as being ‘not American’. Maybe it’s time to figure out who we are without them.”
