Washington Has United Canada Politically — and Split It Economically

Paul St-Pierre Plamondon has spent his political life arguing that Quebec should leave Canada. This month he announced he will not hold a sovereignty referendum while Donald Trump is president. A separatist choosing not to separate, and naming the American president as the reason.

deciding Quebec’s political fate “must not be hijacked by the upheaval of American politics, the outbursts of an unpredictable president or by a campaign of fear.” — Paul St-Pierre Plamondon

The same pressure is closing Canada's other old wounds. The CanTrust Index shows trust in the federal government at 40 percent and in news media at 45 percent, the highest since 2016 ^[1], and the pollster behind the numbers names the cause directly.

The combination of a serious threat from outside the country, but also a prime minister who seems to be able to articulate Canadian values and bring Canadians together around those values, is contributing to this trust as well. — Bruce Maclellan

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and Prime Minister Mark Carney, who agree on almost nothing, have both pledged to campaign for national unity in Alberta ^[2].

I want a strong Alberta within a united Canada, and all Conservatives will be campaigning for Canadian unity in Alberta. — Pierre Poilievre

And on January 1, Ottawa put Bill C-5 into force, tearing down interprovincial trade barriers as a direct answer to American tariffs ^[3]. Read quickly, the story writes itself: the squeeze backfired, and Canada closed ranks. But the same pressure is doing something else at the same time. The provinces are now running their own foreign policies. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has spent $75 million on an advertising campaign inside the United States, aimed at Republican-held districts ahead of the midterms, and he used Ronald Reagan's voice to do it ^[4].

It’s probably one of the best ads I’ve ever seen — and it’s coming from Ronald Reagan’s voice. — Doug Ford

A province is attempting electoral intervention in a foreign country. Alberta is doing the same in its own way: pursuing export infrastructure and bilateral trade ties on its own, meeting with the Haisla Nation to move ammonia and potash to the coast and asking Ottawa to repeal the tanker moratorium, while its premier simultaneously manages a secession referendum ^[5][6].

As the Rights and Title Holders of the Central and North Coast and Haida Gwaii, we are here to remind the Alberta government, the federal government, and any potential private proponent that we will never allow oil tankers on our coast, and that this pipeline project will never happen. — Marilyn Slett

Then there are the pipelines. Alberta and Ontario have proposed the Northern Shield Energy Corridor, a 3,300-kilometre line from Hardisty to Sarnia built explicitly to bypass the U.S. border ^[7]. The federal government is pursuing its own separate West Coast line to Asia. Two levels of government, one goal, two projects, neither waiting for the other. And beneath all of it, consumers are restructuring the relationship from the bottom up. Eight in ten Canadians say boycotting American goods would strengthen the country's hand ^[8], and households are shifting spending permanently to local producers: greenhouses replacing U.S. lettuce, local dairies and breweries growing ^[9]. Why does one pressure produce both outcomes? Because it lands at two different levels. A threat to the country as a whole, annexation talk and a president renaming a lake, triggers the rally-around-the-flag reflex the pollster describes. But the pressure also lands province by province: tariffs aimed at specific industries, a $500 billion line of credit dangled to Alberta separatists ^[10], a joint defense board suspended ^[11]. Each of those gives a single province its own reason to act without waiting for Ottawa. The actors themselves say so. Ford frames his ad campaign as a response to the tariffs; Smith frames her trade push as a response to the same threat. This is not coincidence. It is one pressure splitting into two responses. The pipelines are the image to hold onto. Two governments building toward the same goal through separate projects, neither waiting for the other. Canada has not been this politically united in a generation, and it has not been this economically uncoordinated since the free-trade era began. The squeeze did not break what it aimed at. It split the thing it never expected to.