Since early 2025, the ongoing pressure from the trade war and corresponding tariffs applied by the Trump Administration out of the United States of America has had a silver lining effect strengthening the resolve of Canadians to strive for our country to become a truly independent middle power on the world stage.
Prior to this trade war, many political pundits across the political spectrum here seemed to take for granted the narrative of the post-WWII paradigm which ascribed a supposed benevolence of the American Empire.
However, throughout the latter 20th Century, much of the American Hemisphere (and Global South, overall) had already been under attack from Uncle Sam.
This was acutely felt in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America where coup d'états were carried out and military juntas were violently installed to secure the business interests of American corporations.
In some cases, there were outright invasions conducted directly by the American military, in countries such as in Grenada, Panama, and the Dominican Republic.
While the above kind of direct action was often undertaken involving military and counter-revolutionary militias, another more indirect method of warfare was also waged through crippling sanctions used to strangle their economies.
Recent developments over the last couple of years have also shown that the idea of the American Empire formally taking Canada is back on the table with Trump’s musings of annexation, the multiple waves of tariffs used as economic coercion, and the astroturfing of a separatist movement in Alberta. This has reminded many people here of an earlier history that was much more antagonistic in relation to our country and America's ambitions of expansionism with “Manifest Destiny.”
Trump’s latest move to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America” feels equal parts petty as it is ridiculous. To some extent the Gulf of Mexico-America debate has parallels across the world, a situation with two ethnic groups sharing a body of water, such as with the Persian-Arabian Gulf in West Asia, but the “Lake Ontario” bit feels oddly specific to spite Ontario Premier Ford, after all why not just rename the Great Lakes collectively to become the “American Lakes?”
Premier Ford has been somewhat consistent when it comes to standing up to President Trump over trade, however this is more rooted in rhetoric, as many of his domestic policies actually weaken the provincial economy, and by extension the Canadian economy, following the disproven template of neo-liberalism, making it easier for foreign capital to further subordinate our country.
During the 1980s, the Canadian government and the ideological right-wing shifted their philosophy on economics towards the “blue tory” neo-liberalism (that of Prime Minister Bryan Mulroney and the current Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre) and away from the “red tory” classical conservatism (that of the early Prime Ministers, including Sir John A. MacDonald and Sir Wilfried Laurier) which had historically built up the public infrastructure of Canada.
Despite being monarchist in nature, the British-style “red tory” approach to governance still had an emphasis the public good, following the credo of “peace, order, and good governance,” which featured the creation and maintenance of the country’s nationalized assets, known as the Crown Corporations.
In contrast, the American-style “blue tory” approach which enables a more uninhibited capitalism around the increased privatization of the country’s public infrastructure, such as selling off the Crown Corporations.
This neo-liberal economic shift, alongside an influx of entertainment media and pop culture, coincided with the decades of our country sinking into the de facto position of being a vassal sate to the American Empire.
This brings us to an important point, that rhetoric alone is not sufficient.
In fact, the catchy saying of “elbows up,” referencing our country’s favourite winter sport, that has been repurposed for resistance to “Donroe Doctrine,” actually does imply a certain physicality, beyond just espousing of sentiments of independence, that our solution must be action-oriented advancing the material conditions for our population and the geopolitical position for our country.
We need an economic agenda, building off the base of the Crown Corporations and other public infrastructure, not only restoring what we had, but reaching up to unattained heights never before seen, solidifying our international relations, not just trying to circumvent America within the confines of the “Collective West,” such working with as the European Union and the CANZUCK countries, but more robustly, by also connecting our emerging economy with BRICS+ countries and “alternative world order” to balance out our previous dependency on America.
For this, we must give Prime Minister Mark Carney credit, he has started this process by making moves mending our diplomatic relations with China and India, damaged badly by debacles during the Trudeau Administration, and it is our hope that as Canadian Republicans we can continue to better position our country as part of the emerging multipolar world of win-win international cooperation, as a sovereign republic and a truly independent middle power in the 21st Century.
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