TORONTO—As Canada walks away from trade negotiations with the United States, there is a truth that has to be acknowledged more seriously if we wish to be more than a vassal state, or a junior partner in an American hemispheric empire.

For some time, Prime Minster Mark Carney has been making the argument that the Canada-U.S. relationship has fundamentally changed, and that the comfortable old ways won’t return with the next administration. The old assumptions that Canada could count on easy access to U.S. markets, capital and technology, and that Canada had a special relationship with the U.S., assumptions that were the foundation for Canadian economic growth, jobs, and investment, no longer apply. 

That message was reinforced when Carney conducted a rare Saturday press conference on Parliament Hill—with Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Canada’s chief trade negotiator Janice Charette behind him—to explain the decision to walk away. “While we believed, earlier this week, that we were moving towards a mutually beneficial agreement, in recent days, the United States proposed new terms that were uneconomic, unfair, and undermined the net benefits to Canada, and called into question the reliability of any deal. In short, they asked too much, and offered too little,” Carney said.

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We have to find a new way. While cross-border trade and investment with the U.S. will continue, and there will continue to be many interactions between Canadians and Americans, what has changed is that Canada can no longer count on close ties and co-operation. Canada must build an economy which is less vulnerable to U.S. pressures and which can capitalize on the opportunities in many other parts of the world. 

That means we will........

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