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Does Canada need to prepare for a US attack?
Borderline frenemies meet in Quebec for the G7 as Canada begins thinking the unthinkable: how to defend against a US attack.
You know things are going badly when the first thing Secretary of State Marco Rubio has to do on his G7 visit to Canada is deny his intention to invade. “It is not a meeting about how we’re going to take over Canada,” he said, though no one believed him.
Why would they?
President Donald Trump’s mantra includes daily insults, threats, and acts of disrespect toward Canada as he launches his destructive trade war. But for a guy who’s all about high walls and protected borders, he has a very different view of it when it comes to his northern neighbo(u)r, dismissing it as an “artificial line” drawn “with a ruler.” “When you take away that,” he said this week in a moment of empire-building fantasy, “and you look at that beautiful formation of Canada and the United States, there’s no place anywhere in the world that looks like that.”
I have no clue what he means by that whole “beautiful formation” thing, but our hardcore GZERO trivia fans deserve a short backgrounder on the actual formation of the US-Canada border.
Since the Treaty of Ghent (oh yes, I’m going there!) ended the War of 1812, the boundary between Canada and the US has been relatively stable. Sure, some fellow history buffs will point out the border was tested in 1816 by the humiliating construction of a US military battery dubbed “Fort Blunder,” a battery mistakenly built on Canadian soil that had to be moved south, where it is now called Fort Montgomery. But we survived that tiff. Later, in 1842, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty (stay with me here) clarified the border with better surveys, and in 1909, the Boundary Waters Treaty determined how the Great Lakes would be divvied up. Since then, there have been updates and a few disputes, but prime ministers and presidents have happily memorized what might be called the Psalm of the 49th parallel, which starts with the famous line, “This is the longest undefended border in the world.”
So no, these are not artificial lines but ones mutually agreed upon in legally binding treaties. The nub is that President Trump has shown he doesn’t care about treaties, even ones he signed himself, like the USMCA back in 2020. He prefers the law of the jungle, where strong countries take what they want from weaker ones. And Trump wants Canada. He has repeatedly claimed that Canada would not be “viable as a country” without US trade, which is why his stated strategy is to annex Canada by “economic force.”
Trump’s administration regularly amplifies his imperialist sentiments. This week, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt made the case that Canada should become a state to avoid tariffs, while US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick went on TV after Ontario Premier Doug Ford threatened to slap a 25% tariff on electricity to three northern US states, saying the best way to get a good trade deal with the United States is to “consider the amazing advantages of being the 51st state.”
It’s no wonder that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who leaves office tomorrow, concluded this is about taking over Canada: “What he wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy because that’ll make it easier to annex us.”
When Rubio arrived in Canada for the G7, his Canadian counterpart, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, was not in a joking mood. “If the US can do this to us, their closest friend, then nobody is safe,” she said. Her colleagues in the EU have already absorbed that message, which is why they are talking about a European-run nuclear shield and a massive buildup of their collective defense forces.
It was almost sad to see how the secretary of state tried to spin Trump’s agenda in a bid to lower the temperature. “He says if they became the 51st state, we wouldn’t have to worry about the border and fentanyl coming across because now we would be able to manage that,” Rubio said.
Oh, thanks a bunch.
Annexing Canada is necessary because less than 1% of the illegal fentanyl that enters the US goes across the northern border? By that logic, Canada should annex the US because of the inflow of illegal guns from the US. It is madness, of course, but it’s a madness that is now being measured.
Angus Reid recently conducted a poll on the idea of annexation, and about 60% of Americans oppose it (including 44% of Trump voters), and about 30% would be interested only if Canadians supported the idea. They don’t. In the same poll, 90% of Canadians reject the idea outright, with one interesting exception. “One-in-five would-be CPC voters say they would vote yes, compared to almost zero Liberal (2%), NDP (3%), and Bloc Québécois (1%) voters,” reports Angus Reid.
Still, all this thought about annexation has the defense department in Canada running through scenarios they never imagined possible just months ago: what to do if the US ever attacked.
Trump has questioned the border lines in the Great Lakes, so what if US Coast Guard vessels started to cross that line and test the boundary? What about around the coast or in the Arctic?
Canada suddenly realizes — far too late – that the 2% GDP goal on defense spending is no longer aspirational but urgent. But what kind of military does it need? To find out, I spoke to retired Vice Admiral Mark Norman, the former vice chief of defense staff in Canada and currently a fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
I’ve edited the conversation for this article.
GZERO: Some argue the US is still an ally, but others say we have to treat the US as a foe, one that could even potentially attack Canada. How would you describe the situation?
Norman: We’re outside the guardrails. To put it in nautical terms, we’re in completely uncharted territory here. What’s real and what’s not? How do you interpret what we’re hearing? How do we not overreact? There are many Canadians, both in the public domain and in the machinery of government, who I believe are banking on the faint hope clause, if I can put it that way, meaning they think that things will go back to the way they were. I think that is naive and irresponsible going forward. I don’t believe this is sort of a blip in the evolution of geostrategic affairs, specifically as it relates to the Canada-US relationship. I think we’re seeing a significant change — one could argue it’s almost a pivot.
Look at the Ukrainian situation and the public abandonment of European security. Then look at the ongoing threats of annexation as it relates to Canada.
Canadians have grown up far away from the kinds of threats to physical security and other types of security that many of our global neighbors have had to deal with. We have lived under the umbrella of the United States, and we have taken that for granted. There is some substance in the complaints that are being levied against us. The challenge is the nature of both the threats and the ongoing actions, and what that potentially means for us. I am concerned that the nature of Canada-US relations is changing fundamentally.
What could it look like?
There are two scenarios here, and there is risk in oversimplifying this ... One scenario is that this is simply transactional. This is Trump’s attempt to try and get us to do a bunch of things to up our game, our spending – to do more and contribute more. One could argue this transactional approach, this negotiating tactic, will lead to some magic tipping point at which everything falls into place, and we have some sort of agreement. That is scenario A.
Scenario B is the most threatening scenario. We’ll call it annexation. Not sure what that looks like, specifically, but we take this to mean that in some way or form, the United States is exercising a significant degree of control over what we would have traditionally seen as sovereign decisions made by Canada.
From a military perspective, much of what we would need to do is actually independent of those two scenarios. So we either have to step up and satisfy a whole series of unclear expectations on the part of the current administration, everything from border security to Arctic security to all these other things, or we’ve got to up our game, because if we don’t, then we risk the threat of some sort of loss of control.
I have difficulty imagining scenarios whereby Canada would be invaded or that Canada could respond to something like scenario B. I think there will be coercion. I think there are lots of tools left in Trump’s toolbox to coerce us and threaten us and basically put us off-balance and cause us to react. What’s interesting is we’re either on our own, at which point we need to do a hell of a lot more than we’re doing now, or we’re in the process of being shaken down, which also means we need to do a hell of a lot more. Those will be preconditions for what would be even the most benign and benevolent version of events.
So Canada has to rebuild its military one way or another?
Let’s start with national capacity, domestic capacity, and industrial capacity. One of the unintended consequences of the Ukrainian conflict has been the incredible growth in Ukrainian domestic capacity, notwithstanding the fact that they’re waging what many argued was an unwinnable war against a superpower with one of the largest armies in the world. A lot of that has to do with innovation, engineering, and agility, which has now made them a significant player in the European defense industry. It is particularly relevant to the Canadian situation, where a lot of our military capacity is tied to US technology. I think this is a huge vulnerability for us going forward, even if we were to find ourselves in scenario A. We cannot and should not rely on others for a lot of the stuff. Now, we cannot do everything, but there are enormous alternate sources of technology in our European and Asian partners. And we have to do a much better job of leveraging our own industrial capacity. What are we really good at? We’re really good at things related to AI, acoustic processing, and communications. We’re very good at things related to satellite technology. We have a number of emerging capabilities in unmanned systems, be they airborne or surface, and even underwater capabilities. We have enormous advantages in terms of understanding the technical challenges of the Arctic. It is our backyard. In military terms, we are good at combat management systems. So think of the computer architecture that allows you to do what you need to do from a command and control perspective.
Is the point that Canada will have to build a new type of military faster, cheaper, and less dependent on the US and use more innovation?
Canada will definitely need to explore alternative solutions, like drone capacity, to address the challenges of defending vast territories. But it will still need icebreakers, a navy, and tanks. It’s a new world. One other factor here. You need to be able to deploy and sustain your forces. A lot of people don’t think that’s sexy, but the reality is, this is all about logistics, and this is all about sustainment, which means you have to have an industrial base. You look at the kinds of distances that we’re dealing with in Canada — these are massive distances. These are not insignificant challenges, and we’ve never really dealt with them. You need to be able to control what’s going on. Do you just simply want to monitor what’s going on, or do you want to be able to influence what’s going on? This is where you get into the pointy ends, the more kinetic discussions around what are the hard capabilities that you need and don’t need, but you have to have all that other stuff sorted out first. The reason the Ukrainians are so effective in these asymmetric conflicts is because they figured out a lot of that back-end stuff. Canada needs to do that too.
Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre speaks in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, on Dec. 3, 2024.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre goes after fentanyl
Poilievre, who often blames Trudeau for soft-on-crime policies, said he would introduce mandatory life sentences for fentanyl traffickers. “I will lock up fentanyl kingpins and throw away the key. It's like spraying bullets into a crowd — even if you don’t aim, you will kill people. The penalty should be the same as murder.”
Canadian courts have often ruled that mandatory life sentences for any crime violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but Poilievre has said he would override the courts if necessary to get tough on crime.
The proposal comes as the Conservatives search for new messages to use against the governing Liberals. The party has been connecting with voters for two years by launching attacks against Trudeau and the unpopular consumer carbon tax. But Trudeau has announced that he is resigning and his likely successor, former central banker Mark Carney, has promised to get rid of that tax.
The polls have tightened slightly after many months of downward motion for the Liberals, and they are still moving. A poll of Quebecers shows many have suddenly decided to shift their support to the Liberals, and more would do so if Carney is leader.
Expect Poilievre to talk about crime and find new ways to talk about the cost of living, and keep an eye on volatile public opinion.
Liberals face two showdowns to Trump-proof Canada
As if Justin Trudeau isn’t dealing with enough. His Liberal Party is down in the polls and struggling amid a House of Commons shutdown led by the Conservatives. Now it has to manage an incoming Trump administration intent on extracting as much as it can from Canada.
After nearly 10 years in power, the Liberals are politically weak, and they’re staring down another potential parliamentary showdown over what to do about Donald Trump. Last time, it was overTrump’s 2018 tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum imports. This time, it’s likely to be about the president-elect's latest tariff threat and border security politics.
What the tariff man wants vs. Canada’s choices
Trumprecentlyannounced an intended tariff policy that made Canadian leaders blanch: 25% across the board — levies that would cripple Canada’s economy. The tariff hike wasn’t a surprise, considering Trump campaigned on it, but the 25% rate was a shock, and the inclusion of Canada disabused optimistic Canadians of any hope that a long, close trade and security relationship between the countries would mean preferential treatment.
The president-elect has said Canada would pay the high tariffs “until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” So Trump has laid out his ground rules, but responding to his demands will be tough.
For one thing, the US Drug Enforcement Agency says that while Canada’s border was a fentanyl threat a decade ago, it’s no longer a core part of the drug-poisoning crisis. Mexico poses a bigger threat — almost 500 times more fentanyl was seized by US Border Patrol coming from Mexico than Canada in 2023.
Still, border crossings are up. Encounters between irregular migrants and authorities along the US-Canadian border in 2023 account for just a fraction of the 1.5 million along the US-Mexico border, but the Canadian numbers are higher than ever. Along the northern land border — the world’s longest at 5,525 miles — border patrol reported 189,000 encounters last year, a 73% uptick from the year before — and nearly 600% higher than in 2021.
The Liberal government has promised to be “very visible” on border policy in response to Trump, adding more staff and equipment, including additional helicopters and drones to monitor the frontier. It is also pledging additional resources for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police aimed at curbing human smuggling across the border. They’ve also launched an online ad campaign — in 11 languages — to dissuade refugees from making asylum claims in Canada.
The Mounties, in turn, plan to send more police to the border if necessary, largely in response to Trump’s plan for mass deportations, which it expects will lead to a surge in illegal crossings. The exact number of pledged Mounties is unclear, though the increase could involve sending cadets to the border. The Canada Border Services Agency says it would need up to 3,000 more officers to manage its share of increased border activity.
Border security poses domestic challenges for Trudeau
Any new Canadian border security plan will cost money the government must come up with as part of its budget in early spring. Since the Liberals rely on support in a minority parliament, they require support from opposition parties to pass legislation.
At least one province isn’t waiting around for Trudeau. Alberta is working on its own border plan, which may include a special sheriff unit to patrol the crossing between it and Montana. But the bulk of any plan will come from Ottawa.
While he can’t implement policy, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre — whose side leads the Liberals by 20 points in the polls — can cajole and pile more political pressure on Trudeau. Poilievre’s podium sign during a recent speech read: “Fix the broken border,” and he’s calling for a plan to be presented to Parliament by the Liberals that includes more border patrols, stricter visa rules, a cap on how many asylum-seekers the country accepts, and more.
Trudeau met with opposition leaders on Tuesday to discuss border security and the tariff threat, but Poilievre has political reasons to keep calling it “Trudeau's broken border.” After all, the Conservatives, if their polling holds, are set to replace the Liberals, and the country is due to vote by October 2025.
To pass legislation in the meantime — including the crucial budget Trudeau needs to tighten border controls and keep Trump’s tariffs at bay — the Liberals must win the support of another party in the House of Commons, most likely the NDP, if anyone.
In theory, Poilievre might back a robust Liberal border plan, which Conservatives would claim as their own. But it may be more likely that they’ll reject whatever the Liberals come up with as insufficient and wait to present their own plan if they form a government after the next election.
The Conservatives won’t hand Trudeau a win, says Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst with Eurasia Group’s global macro-geopolitics practice, and will likely respond to the Liberals’ border plan with: “Great, but it’s too late and not enough.” So they’d “vote against it for being too spendthrift and for not doing enough on security and defense.”
That would leave Trudeau with two choices for a partner: the Bloc Quebecois, who are also set on defeating the Liberal government, or the New Democratic Party, who are taking things one day — and one vote — at a time. So far, on the border, the NDP is calling on the government to hire 1,100 new border agents and to expand the agency’s powers.
Thompson says the left-wing Bloc and NDP “might not be the most excited about okaying massive expenditures on border security.”
For the NDP to vote against the Liberals, they’d likely have “to find the budget insufficiently generous when it comes to economic and social supports for Canadians,” Thompson says. But if they simply say the Liberals have gone too far on border and defense spending? “Then suddenly you’re in a situation where the Liberals have lost both flanks, and that could be a trigger for an election,” he adds.
Such a border security showdown could lead to an early election, says Thompson, as the Liberals try to navigate competing demands from Trump and opposition parties at home.
Could a new government fare better?
Should the Conservatives replace the Liberals in 2025, the changing of the guard may give Canada a stronger negotiating position vis-à-vis Trump. Poilievre’s Conservatives, for example, could scrap Liberal policies such as the Online Streaming Act and the digital services tax that irk the US, giving them leverage in negotiations with Trump.
Meanwhile, Trudeau’s ability to navigate tense US-Canada relations could determine his political fate and Canada’s economic future.
FILE PHOTO: France, Paris, 03-12-2022. March against the Uighur genocide
Hard Numbers: Slave labor gets free pass, China probes fried chicken blast, Fresh beef over origins of meat, Windfarms vs. farmlands, Record numbers at US-Canada border
0: Is Canada complying with its obligation, under the revamped NAFTA accords, to stop importing goods that are made with forced labor? A Politico report earlier this week suggested Canadian border services officials were starting to detain shipments from Western China, where Beijing is accused of using slave labor among the Uighur population. But the Globe and Mail reports that zero imports have so far been rejected. Of particular concern are exports of relatively inexpensive Chinese solar panels, which have helped businesses and homes wean themselves off fossil fuels without breaking the bank.
7: Speaking of China, authorities are probing the cause of a massive explosion on Thursday at a fried chicken restaurant near Beijing that left at least 7 people dead and 27 injured. The incident comes amid a big safety crackdown on restaurants following a fatal gas explosion at a barbecue restaurant last year. Crispy fact: Fried chicken is wildly popular in China – KFC was the first US fast food chain to open in China when the country opened up in 1978.
795,000: The US imports an average of about 795,000 head of cattle from Canada every year, but there’s a fresh beef this week over new meat labeling requirements in the US. The Biden administration on Monday issued new rules that permit sellers to label their products as “made in the USA” only when the animals were born, raised, slaughtered, and packaged within the 50 states. The Canadian meat industry says the new rules will depress Canadian exports and raise prices for American meat-lovers.
1: A study in Alberta has determined that even if renewable energy sources grew rapidly, they would still take up less than 1% of the sprawling province’s land two decades from now. The findings come amid a frothy local debate about the merits of giving precious farmland to cows, crops, or wind farms. The government recently imposed a moratorium on the use of any prime land for renewables until a consensus is reached.
7,000: Border patrol in the Swanton Sector, which touches the US states of New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire, arrested some 7,000 migrants trying to cross illegally into the United States last year, more than in the past 12 years combined. With so much attention on the US southern border, migrants (and human traffickers) are setting their sights up north. To put those 7,000 in perspective, in December alone, US border agents encountered 250,000 undocumented migrants entering from Mexico.The Rainbow Bridge over the Niagara River links the borders of Niagara Falls in Ontario, Canada, to Niagara Falls in New York.
Hard Numbers: Migrants head for US-Canada border, Canada flies fresh F-16 funds to Ukraine, Big Oil plans for a Big Crash, Toronto cans scan plan
191,603: While the immigration crisis at the southern US border has commanded significant attention in recent months, the northern border with Canada is becoming more popular with asylum-seekers, undocumented migrants, and human traffickers. In 2023, officials recorded 191,603 encounters with people crossing into the United States via Canada without papers, more than 40% higher than the year before but still less than one-tenth the volume along the US-Mexico frontier.
60 million: Canada pledged to send Ukraine $60 million in support for F-16 jet maintenance and ammunition. The move, part of a larger $500 million pledge made last spring, comes as congressional infighting, public fatigue, and election jockeying continue to hold up tens of billions of dollars worth of fresh support for Kyiv from the US.
30: Given where gas prices are these days you wouldn’t think it, but global oil giants like Shell, Exxon, Chevron, and Total are carefully preparing for the possibility of another oil price crash, beefing up their production at newer oil fields that are profitable even if oil prices plummet to $30 a barrel. As of this writing, that was less than half the price of a barrel, which is hovering around $75.
6: The Ontario government has canceled a pilot program in which people’s IDs would have been scanned at the entrances to six Toronto-area liquor stores. The program was meant as an experiment to find ways to boost security at liquor stores, but it immediately generated privacy concerns, since the data would have been held in government systems for 14 days.
Asylum seekers cross into Canada from the US border near a checkpoint on Roxham Road near Hemmingford, Quebec.
Canada’s top court says US safe for refugees – more or less
The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that the Safe Third Country Agreement, which governs refugee migration between Canada and the United States, is constitutional. Refugee groups had said the US was not a “safe” country and that returning refugees who fled north violated the Canadian Charter’s Section 7 guarantee of “life, liberty, and personal security.” The court said otherwise.
The decision follows the March deal struck between Canada and the US to close the irregular border crossings not covered by the 2002 agreement. Refugee migration experts warned the amendment would make life more dangerous for refugees, and eight migrants died soon after while trying to cross the St. Lawrence River to reach the US from Canada. Data from the US Customs and Border Protection before and after the March deal show an initial downturn in migrant encounters after the deal but an increase in May. Canadian data is pending, but Ottawa has acknowledged that the amendment will be tough to enforce and that the use of clandestine irregular routes could raise the risks of human trafficking and sexual violence while putting children and elderly migrants at greater risk.
In the court’s decision, Justice Nicholas Kasirer wrote that legislative “safety valves” guard against “real and not speculative risks of refoulement from the United States.” The court also noted that while some of the concerns cited by advocates were legitimate, such as poor holding conditions, migrants had access to “curative measures” like resident permits and humanitarian and compassionate exemptions.
So the STCA passed one hurdle … but the court also sent the case back down to the Federal court for review on the grounds of a possible Section 15 violation of the Charter. Section 15 covers equality under the law and protects from “discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.” Advocates argue migrant rights are being violated based on sex and religion, with the US providing inadequate protections and accommodations for either.
While some want the STCA scrapped, both Washington and Ottawa prefer to keep it in place. Both Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau are facing elections in 2024 and 2025 in which immigration will be center stage. Biden needs to limit the porousness of the northern border, and Trudeau needs to reduce irregular migration via Quebec, a province with huge political sway.
Whether the new STCA deal holds, however, is up to the courts, where round two on its constitutionality is about to get underway.CBP Border Patrol agent during a news conference announcing the completion of border wall prototypes in San Diego.
ACLU demands data on irregular border crossings
The New Hampshire American Civil Liberties Union is suing Customs and Border Protection for access to apprehension and encounters data along the New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire borders with Canada. In February, CPB claimed there was an 846% jump between October 2022 and the end of January 2023. Now the ACLU is asking CPB to prove it with hard data – which the latter is disinclined to do. The border agency says it “does not release enforcement statistics and/or enforcement data at less than a Sector or Field Office level.” Whether CPB can keep this data private remains to be seen – that will be up to the courts.
In March, as President Joe Biden visited Ottawa, Canada and the US struck a deal on closing a common irregular border crossing and amending the decades-old Safe Third Country Agreement. The deal was short on details and long on promises, and experts said it posed a risk to migrant safety. In May, Canada’s Border Services Agency said the deal was working, claiming irregular migration had fallen “significantly.”
The March deal was premised on increased irregular migration between the two countries. That deal is done, and the ACLU suit won’t change it, but it isn’t the only border policy change being sought based on agency claims. In New Hampshire, for example, Gov. Chris Sununu is pressing for a tighter, more expensive border patrol to address irregular crossings from Canada into his state. That measure is currently being considered by the state Senate.
While governments like to claim they make policy based on hard facts, the ACLU thinks that evidence should be made public, especially when it comes to an issue as sensitive and significant as migration. This isn’t the ACLU’s first border policy-related pushback. In fact, last week, CPB settled a 2020 lawsuit with ACLU chapters over border patrol checkpoints on Interstate 93 in Woodstock, NH, near the US-Canada border. Use of the checkpoints has now been suspended.