Washington Is Squeezing Canada From Above and Below

Canada's own disinformation watchdog has put the United States in a category it has never occupied before. A joint report by DisinfoWatch and the University of Regina groups Washington alongside Moscow as a foreign actor working to undermine Canadian unity ^[1]. Not a rival in some distant theater — the country's closest ally, listed next to Russia. The trade half of that finding is the part Canadians have been living with for a year. The instruments are familiar: 50 percent tariffs on roughly $20 billion in goods ^[2], a threat to walk away from the CUSMA trade pact, and a negotiation with Mexico that pointedly leaves Ottawa out ^[3]. What is newer is how plainly the administration now states the purpose. The U.S. trade representative, Jamieson Greer, has been explicit about it.

We're not really about going out and changing the world. We're trying to change the terms of trade — Jamieson Greer

The goalposts move by design. Canada abandoned its digital services tax and rolled back its Online Streaming Act under American pressure, and Greer declined to count either as a concession — undoing something bad, he said, is not the same as doing something good ^[3]. Military procurement is wired into the same pressure: when Ottawa began reviewing its F-35 purchase, the U.S. ambassador warned that canceling it would threaten NORAD and sink a trade deal ^[4]. The second track is quieter and stranger. Treasury and State Department officials held secret meetings with the Alberta Prosperity Project, a group seeking a $500 billion U.S. credit line to bankroll Alberta's secession ^[5]. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said in public what those meetings implied.

I think we should let them come down into the U.S. — Scott Bessent

British Columbia's premier, David Eby, put it more bluntly.

Alberta’s a natural partner for the U.S. — Scott Bessent

This is where the watchdog's finding snaps into focus. Russia works to fracture Canadian unity covertly, through influence networks and fake accounts. Washington is doing the same thing in the open, with cabinet secretaries and public endorsements. Whether the two tracks are one coordinated plan, no one has shown — they may simply be two instincts running in parallel. But they are simultaneous, and the effect is a pincer: pressure on the federal government from above, pressure on the federation itself from below. The strange part is what the pressure is doing to Canadians. The trade war has produced a genuine rally-around-the-flag: 84 percent of Canadians still say they are proud to be Canadian ^[6], return trips to the United States fell 37 percent, and roughly two-thirds now hold an unfavorable view of their neighbor ^[7]. But the unity is not evenly distributed. Confidence in the country's survival splits along party lines: 58 percent of Conservative supporters say they are confident in national unity, against 91 percent of Liberals ^[6]. The pressure is finding Canada's fault line even as it hardens the surface. The next test is already on the calendar. A petition in Alberta could force a separation vote as early as October 19 ^[1]. The pressure has been building for a year; now it has a date.