A man holds the Canada flag on a hockey stick during a rally at Peace Arch Park in Surrey, B.C., in April. Canada's political leaders agree on the need to diversify trade in the wake of Trump's tariffs and annexationist threats.Nav Rahi/The Globe and Mail

John Ibbitson is a media fellow at the Fraser Institute and a senior fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

The world of politics often embraces contradictions. Canada faces a stark contradiction today.

On the one hand, our country is dangerously divided, regionally and generationally. Both Quebec and Alberta may soon be holding referendums on sovereignty. Many younger Canadians living economically precarious lives resent the Boomers and Gen Xers, with their pensions, health care and other entitlements that millennials and Gen Zs help pay for.

These cleavages are so severe that they put the country’s future at risk. And yet, at the same time, Canadians are developing a robust consensus on how to respond.

Divisions threaten to undermine our country’s future. Consensus could save it.

There is unanimous agreement among political leaders at both the federal and provincial levels on the need to diversify Canada’s trade, in the wake of the Trump administration’s tariffs and annexationist threats. Everyone accepts that Canada must lessen its dependence on an America that has become erratic and, in some ways, even adversarial.

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Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney snipe at each other over how best to approach trade diversification, but

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