Concepts of a plan to confront the new United States

Just because we don’t like what’s happening doesn’t mean it’s not happening.  

It is so very Canadian that our commentators are filling the airwaves trying to figure out how to accommodate Trump’s tariff threats as if we’re having some kind of fact-based dispute on softwood lumber in the 1980s. Authoritarian superpowers threaten because they can. 

Maybe we can find some magic combination of border measures and retaliatory actions that will unwind the worst of these threats. But even if you want to make a spirited case over a beer that the madness in the U.S. will pass, or that Trump is bluffing, or that countervailing centres of power in the U.S. will resist him, those increasingly look like magical thinking. What’s about to happen is seriously bad for Canada and we need to get busy. 

While things may change, we cannot presume they will. We must accommodate ourselves to a world in which the U.S. says quite explicitly that it doesn’t care about our economic well-being. 

Our public discussions about “how to respond to tariffs” obscure the far bigger threat that is much more difficult to process intellectually and emotionally: we are living in a world in which the U.S. is using its enormous wealth and power to put America first, and the interests of Canada are irrelevant to that project.  

Although there are many Americans who abhor what the Trump administration is doing, the largest, most powerful companies in the world, many of which are integrated digital, AI, media and national security companies, understand what they are expected to do.  

So, it sucks to be us, but let’s get on with the work of changing the mental maps that shape how we understand our relationship with the U.S. It’s not us, it’s them. They’ve changed. So now we need a different plan. 

We should allocate more capital to the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), Export Development Canada (EDC) and Canada Development Investment Corporation (CDEV) to invest in Canadian businesses, support Canadian entrepreneurs who want to buy businesses from those retiring and de-risk aggressive strategies to diversify trade. We should accelerate the capital cost allowance as we have done in the past. And it seems clear we should control our own digital and wireless networks and not let Elon Musk anywhere near them. 

This will require all governments to re-organize around big challenges rather than specific ministries. This will need to start with informal governance and workarounds because systems change slowly and we need to start today. 

But this isn’t just a public-policy project for governments. This is a whole-of-Canada project for all of us.  

Large public-purpose institutions, like hospitals, colleges and universities need to look at their procurement and purchasing practices, as well as the investment practices of their endowments and invest more at home.  

Philanthropic foundations, heavily subsidized by the Canadian taxpayer, must grant more than their 5% disbursement and invest more of their endowments in ways that have a positive impact in Canadian communities. Donor-advised funds and family offices should do likewise and choose, for example, to invest more in affordable housing and less in American equities. Why not fund an unlimited number of new medical, science and tech research chairs and see what that produces? 

Our pension funds have resisted calls to invest more in Canada, but American capital is being mobilized to advance the narrow ‘America First’ economic interests of the U.S. It cannot be business as usual for Canadian pension funds. 

And all of our corporate giants and financial institutions who benefit from the regulatory protection of the Canadian state now must put their money where their mouths have been: if it is really in the national interest to have large oligopolies, now is the time to reorient their practices to purchase and invest to support Canadians and smaller Canadian companies.  

Our public financial institutions, like Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), the Canada Infrastructure Bank, BDC and EDC can make all kinds of significant changes, including simple ones like charging Canadians less for insurance or reducing interest rates to small businesses. 

And just as we sued Big Tobacco companies in the past, it’s time to revisit the civil suits against social media giants for the social harms that they cause – processes that were ended when protections for digital platforms were stealthily included in the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Free Trade Agreement.  

And perhaps the most important point as we prepare to confront this existential threat: our institutions of power and influence should undertake all of this work with a focus on the interests and lives of working and middle-class people. At the end of the day, our corporate leaders and retired public servants like me will be fine (probably…?) But there are lots of people who won’t be fine and will find themselves pushed into bankruptcy or hunger or homelessness. As we reorient our mindset, practices and policies to adjust to this new world, we need to put the interests of working Canadians first. 

I don’t pretend to have a detailed plan, but we need to mobilize all our formal and informal networks. The coalitions, councils and networks of elite power need to step up for Canadians. Stop talking and start doing. And at the more local level, the chambers of commerce and community foundations need to get together next week to figure out better ways to support their communities starting yesterday. 

None of this may work. But what Trump seeks is submission and humiliation from anyone he deals with. Even if you were wearing a MAGA hat last year, some part of you has to recognize that the U.S. has changed in ways that threaten Canadians’ economic well-being. It is clear that some of us are choosing subjugation, but we don’t have to. 

Living next to a superpower run by oligarchs is not where we expected to be 20 years ago. But it’s where we are. Pretending otherwise doesn’t serve our interests. Canada is big enough, powerful enough, smart enough and rich enough to reorient our policies, practices and investments towards building a stronger, more independent economy. We just haven’t had to do that until now. But now we have to. I’m done with this shit.