A protester holds a fabricated U.S.-Canada flag as Alberta sovereigntists and supporters gather outside the Alberta Legislature, in Edmonton on May 3, 2025.Artur Widak/Reuters
Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson’s latest book is Breaking Point: The New Big Shifts Putting Canada at Risk.
Donald Trump, in his second term, threatens Canada’s economy, its security, its very future. But the American President is also a catalyst.
For too many years, Canadian political leaders have turned away from long-standing difficulties. The Trump Challenge forces us to reckon with the country’s future.
We have always been an improbable country, occupying the cold half of the North American continent, much of the population strung out across a 9,000-km border with the United States. There is a certain logic to Mr. Trump’s suggestion that we simply become part of the U.S., especially because so much of our history has been marked by linguistic, cultural and regional division. And new demographic, population, generational and cultural shifts have left us more divided than ever.
There are cleavages in every region of the country. Although immigration levels in Atlantic Canada are rising, out-migration and fragile economies continue to weaken the region’s place within Confederation.
Although polls show that support for sovereignty is relatively low in Quebec, the Parti Québécois appears headed for victory in next year’s provincial election, and leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon has vowed to hold a third referendum, which is bound to be divisive and damaging, both for Quebec and for the rest of Canada.
And Quebec might not be the only province to hold a sovereignty referendum in the near future. Former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s intrusions into provincial affairs and his dedication to fighting global warming at the expense of oil-and-gas development have left Saskatchewan and Alberta dangerously estranged. Both provinces passed legislation that reasserts their provincial powers, and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has lowered the bar for citizen-initiated referendums that could lead to one on sovereignty for Alberta. How would Alberta respond to such a proposal, if Western Canada cannot be reconciled with the centre?
Hundreds of First Nations members and allies gather outside the Alberta Legislature to protest Alberta’s proposed separation from Canada on May 15, 2025, in Edmonton.Artur Widak/Reuters
In our book The Big Shift, published in 2013, we talked about the inability of the Laurentian elites, as we called them, to grasp the demographic and political shifts under way in Canada. We worry that these Central Canadian decision-makers are even more incapable of comprehending the country’s growing regional divides.
They scoff at the notion that Quebeckers might decide to break Canada apart, or that Albertans might vote to secede. They remind us of the political elites who were equally dismissive of the notion that Britons might vote for Brexit. And we all know how that turned out.
Meanwhile, Ontario confronts a sustained economic downturn in the face of American tariffs and years of weak productivity.
The return of Donald Trump provoked a brief surge of elbows-up nationalism. But Canada remains deeply regionally divided.
The country’s cleavages are vertical as well as horizontal. An entire generation of younger Canadians are at risk of giving up on their own future. A succession of Nanos polls has revealed that seven in 10 Canadians believe the next generation will experience a lower standard of living than people enjoy today. Eight in 10 millennials and nine in 10 Gen Zs believe that home ownership is a luxury reserved for the rich, according to a 2024 Ipsos poll. Obtaining a college degree has become a crippling expense, with the average graduate carrying $28,000 in student debt, and those graduates confront the precarity of the gig economy, with relatively few secure, well-paying jobs that offer adequate pensions.
Older generations, in contrast, generally enjoy home ownership, the equity that comes from the rising value of those homes and secure pensions. Their health care and home-care needs are paid by the taxes of workers who may lack some or all of the security older generations enjoy.
Young men are particularly vulnerable. There are now fewer young men than women working, in training or at school, according to Statistics Canada. Progressive elites tell young white men that they benefit from unearned privilege, but many of these men feel isolated and resentful of policies that appear to exclude them from getting ahead. We should celebrate a society in which women are finally participating more equally than ever before, even if full equality has still not been achieved. But we are left with the problem of young men who feel unable to live up to social expectations.
Fewer young men than women are working, in training or at school, according to Statistics Canada.Maria Collins/The Globe and Mail
Some of those young men turn toward conservative parties that promise fewer rules and regulations and lower taxes. During the 2025 federal election campaign, polls showed that people 35 and under were more likely to vote Conservative, while Boomers inclined toward the Liberals – a stark reflection of the generational political divide.
The danger is not that young people will vote for one party or another. The danger is that they may start to give up on Canada entirely. In one Ipsos poll from January, 2025, four in 10 people under the age of 40 said they would consider letting Canada be annexed by the United States if the financial offer was good enough.
If the next generation does not see Canada as a place of opportunity, it will disengage, not just from the economy but from civic life, politics and the very idea of Canada itself.
So many chickens are coming home to roost in the wake of Mr. Trump’s threats. For decades, both Liberal and Conservative federal governments failed to invest in Canada’s defence, content to let the Americans watch over us. But Mr. Trump is hostile to NATO and is eyeing the acquisition of Greenland, perhaps by force. Both Russia and China have ambitions to increase their Arctic presence. In any contest over control of the Arctic, would the United States be our ally or our adversary?
Opinion: This is what the opening move of the U.S.’s attempted annexation of Canada could look like
And even as Canada confronts new tariff restrictions on its traditional access to the American market, it also finds itself estranged from both China and India, with little to show thus far from trade agreements with Europe and with Pacific nations. Foreign policy is defence policy is trade policy. Canada neglected its defences and relied on the American protection. But that protection is now less reliable, and we have weakened ties, over the decades, with other allies and potential trading partners. Canada stands alone.
Both Conservative and Liberal governments contributed to some of the challenges facing Canada today. But it was Mr. Trudeau who oversaw the greatest policy failure of modern times, by letting the immigration system spin entirely out of control.
As with so many aspects of the Trudeau legacy, the intentions were honourable: to grow Canada’s population and secure its future through increased immigration. There were arguments for and against the decision to almost double the intake of permanent residents to 500,000 a year. But there was no excuse for letting the number of temporary foreign workers and international students skyrocket, along with the number of people seeking asylum. Suddenly there were three million non-permanent residents in Canada, competing with younger native-born workers for jobs and housing. For the first time in a quarter century, polls showed that most Canadians believed Canada brought in too many immigrants.
Public support for immigration and multiculturalism has been Canada’s great competitive advantage, creating a diverse yet peaceful society of old and new Canadians living and working together in harmony. But by flooding the country with newcomers, the Trudeau government broke the consensus in favour of high levels of immigration and undermined our unique social contract. The damage to the country’s harmony and its future prospects could be incalculable.
Public support for immigration and multiculturalism has been Canada’s great competitive advantage. Applicants become new Canadians at a citizenship ceremony in Ottawa, March, 2025.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Because of the Liberal government’s failures in immigration and defence, and because its economic policies had contributed to weak growth and low productivity, it seemed inevitable that Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives would triumph in a 2025 election. In the fall of 2024, the Tories were more than 20 points ahead of the Grits. But then came a succession of political tsunamis: Mr. Trump winning the presidential election; finance minister Chrystia Freeland accusing Mr. Trudeau of betrayal and bad policies as she resigned; Mr. Trudeau’s own resignation; Mr. Trump’s tariffs and annexationist threats; Mark Carney’s arrival as Liberal Leader.
In the end, although the Conservatives won more than 41 per cent of the vote – usually enough for a comfortable majority government– the Liberals won 44 per cent, while the NDP vote collapsed. The Liberals won, in part, by stealing so much of the Conservative platform that the police should have laid charges. Mr. Carney eliminated the deeply unpopular consumer carbon tax, reduced income tax, offered to eliminate the GST for first-time home buyers, promised to toughen the rules on immigration and to work toward a balanced budget. The Grits took the blue Tory platform, slapped some red paint over it, and called it their own.
But a larger question remains: Can the Liberals, the Conservatives or any Canadian political party address the country’s deep divisions? The Liberals have moved on shoring up defences, but there has been no major progress in dismantling internal trade and regulatory barriers; nor is there a consensus on new national infrastructure, including pipelines.
Opinion: We must not allow immigration to become a major cultural concern for Canadians
The Conservatives have long been committed to expanding oil-and-gas exports and to deregulating the economy. But about 15 per cent of Canadians view Mr. Trump favourably, and many of them also vote Conservative, which risks alienating the party from the large majority of Canadians who oppose the American President. And the future of the NDP at the federal level appears as bleak as the future of many Liberal parties at the provincial level.
There are ways to step back from Canada’s breaking point, though it won’t be easy. Some of what we propose will lie outside many people’s box, such as moving much of the federal government out of Ottawa and into Western Canada. (We are particularly taken with the notion of putting the Canada Council in Saskatoon.) Some of our proposals, such as ending media subsidies or conferring taxing powers on First Nations, have been proposed by others. And certain proposals, such as encouraging urban sprawl or weakening the bilingualism requirements in the federal public service, will offend some readers.
Our recommended solutions share in common the assumption that Canada isn’t working as well as it used to or as well as it should and that governments at all levels must move swiftly and emphatically to prevent the country’s fracture.
The thing to remember is that we have been here before, and come through. We created Confederation to prevent American annexation. We built a transcontinental railroad, a great seaway, highways and airports and satellite networks. We fought in war and upheld the peace and negotiated some of the world’s most ambitious trade agreements. We overcame the threat of separation, just as we are going to overcome it again. We weathered the great financial crisis of 2008–09 and got through COVID better than most.
Now we must rebuild a Canada where young families can afford homes and futures, where Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples share power and possibility, where each region speaks to the other in friendship. What we need is the will to create the best possible Canada. Let’s get to work.