With its pause on the Permanent Joint Board on Defence, the U.S. is attempting to constrain Canada

Open this photo in gallery:

It is possible you have never heard of the Permanent Joint Board on Defence.

It meets just once or twice a year – these days not even that – to provide Canadian and American military leaders with the opportunity for a full and frank exchange of views on bilateral defence issues. But it is far from the only instrument of co-operation between the two countries’ militaries, or even the most important.

Still, it would be hard to deny its historic significance. The PJBD was the creation of the Ogdensburg Agreement, the 1940 accord that laid the groundwork, along with the later Hyde Park agreement, for the shared defence of the continent, not just in the world war then raging (which the U.S. had yet to join), but in the decades after.

In its heyday the PJBD advised on the creation of NORAD and the building of the St. Lawrence Seaway, among other matters.

More broadly, it was the linchpin of Canada’s integration into the American command structure.

So the symbolism of a senior Pentagon official announcing that the U.S. was “pausing” the Board “to reassess how this forum benefits shared North American defense” is, shall we say, arresting.

Carney plays down U.S. suspension of North America defence board

The official, Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Elbridge Colby (who now styles himself Undersecretary of War, in keeping with the Trump administration’s preferred, but legally baseless, nomenclature), made his name as a China hawk before joining the administration.

So the symbolism is also arresting of Mr. Colby, in the wake of a U.S.-China summit in which Donald Trump went out of his way to signal his reluctance to defend democratic Taiwan from invasion – among a string of other concessions – lecturing Canada on the consequences of being an unreliable ally.

But there it was, spelled out in a post on X, which I guess is how we issue diplomatic communiqués nowadays. Canada, he said, had “failed to make credible progress on its defense commitments.” The “gaps between rhetoric and reality” (there was a link to Mark Carney’s Davos speech) could not be ignored any longer.

There followed a map of the continent with the message: “Delivering on shared continental defense begins by recognizing our shared geography.”

As others have noted, it is not credible to suppose this is really about the level of Canadian defence spending. That would have been a message worth delivering four years ago, or even two. But with Canada having already met the old NATO defence spending target, as of this time last year, of 2 per cent of GDP, and having formally committed to meeting the new NATO target of 3.5 per cent of GDP (more than the U.S. spends currently) by 2035, it would seem odd to pick this of all moments for such a theatrical show of outrage.

U.S. suspends joint defence advisory board with Canada

So no, this is not about the level of Canadian defence spending. It may, however, be about the composition: specifically, how much of this new Canadian defence spending will be directed America’s way. With Canada’s purchase of 88 F-35 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin still up, as it were, in the air, and with the government’s latest Defence Industrial Strategy pledging to buying more from Canadian suppliers (and therefore less from American), it’s not hard to see the PJBD “pause” as a brushback pitch.

But even that’s not really what this is about. Rather, we should see it as part of a larger effort to contain this country within U.S.-defined limits. Whether the issue is trade, defence, or resources, it is now U.S. policy to curtail Canada’s ties with other countries, in favour of locking us up in America’s ghastly embrace.

This rather complicates matters, strategically. To the problem of increasing U.S. attempts to exploit our dependence on them for its own purposes, the answer glibly offered until now has been: well, we’ll just diversify – trade more with other countries, form closer defence relationships with Europe, and so on.

What hasn’t been asked enough is: What do we do if the response from the United States is, we won’t let you diversify? We’re not just going to limit trade between our two countries, or use the threat of it to extort you, but we are also going to keep you from trading more with others. What, you thought we were just going to sit back and watch while you got out from under our thumbs?

We are only just beginning to see how far and how hard the Trump administration is prepared to push this. The Gordie Howe bridge saga is another example. I expect the USMCA talks will be the venue for all sorts of extravagant demands, only tangentially related to trade. The predator will not easily be parted with its prey.