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Canada Is Already at War with the US—We Just Don’t Know It Yet

Conflicts don’t always start with an invasion

In history’s long arc, Canada is but a glimmer of a nation. And whereas there was a time when the accident of our favourable geography led us to believe that our existence would be eternal, regardless of how much or how little we invested in the trappings of self-reliance, that is decidedly no longer the case.

Canada faces hybrid war from the US: tariffs, propaganda, intimidation

Canadians still cling to the idea that the old alliance will return

Survival depends on breaking decades of dependence on Washington

Being surrounded by three oceans and sharing the continent with our big brother, the global hegemon, was mostly great while the familial relationship lasted. But our continued existence as a liberal democracy in North America is by no means guaranteed. Canada has been under a constant barrage of lies since nearly the very start of President Donald Trump’s second term when he started floating the psy-op of Canada becoming the fifty-first state. The trade war was concocted on the demonstrably false notion that Canada was a major source of illegal fentanyl and illegal aliens in the United States. This fantasy was used to invoke the national-security grounds to justify substantial tariffs across the board on Canadian trade, which have been in play to varying degrees ever since.

Most recently, this hybrid form of trade and information war hit a high-water mark with a threat of increasing the tariff rate to 100 percent on all Canadian goods entering the US if Canada “makes a deal with China.” Combined with this threat was a reversion to calling Canada’s prime minister “Governor Carney,” a practice that had ceased after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stepped down.

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There is evidence to support that the leaders of our national security apparatus on both the bureaucratic and political sides believe that the warfare is an aberration. Canada’s minister of national defence insists that beneath the White House’s rhetoric lies a solid, layered foundation of co-operation. “We are moving in lockstep,” David McGuinty told iPolitics at the end of 2025. CSIS director Dan Rogers struck a similar note this past November, saying that it was “in Canada’s best interests” to maintain a strong security and intelligence partnership with the US.

It goes on. At January’s Conservative convention in Calgary, Pierre Poilievre delivered a nearly fifty-minute speech that did not mention the threat Trump’s regime poses to Canadian sovereignty. And even while opening a new consulate in Greenland, itself under threat of US expansionism, Foreign Minister Anita Anand emphasized her desire to continue “to build ties with the United States.”

There is a sense, in other words, that we still have a trusted defence, security, and intelligence partnership with the United States.........

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