Canada is on a war footing as the US becomes its enemy

America is no longer a member of the free world. That is the almost unbearable truth that has been revealed over the past two months.

- STEPHEN MARCHE

For Europe, this turn of events has been and will continue to be a painful loss, requiring a more or less complete re-evaluation of their militaries and economic orders. But for Canada, the loss of a sane America is a direct threat to our national survival, and a grotesque betrayal of one of the longest-standing peaceful relationships in world history.

For Canadians, Americans are not just friends and neighbours and allies; they are kin. Americans are our family members, often literally. We have woken up to find our cousins plotting, openly, to enslave us.

Canada has been, more or less, on a war footing since Trump’s declaration that he wanted to make Canada the “51st State”. The national unity that Trump has created in this country is unprecedented. Not since the first American Civil War, when their incipient breakdown threatened to spread across the border, and Canada responded by confederating, has the country been so totally together.

The political leadership and the people are united both in goals and in strategy. When you’re facing a bully, you take your lumps up front, then you hit back with everything you have and you prepare to suffer. Ontario premier Doug Ford has threatened not just retaliatory tariffs but turning off the power supply to New England, in his words, “with a smile on my face”. Ontario is the single largest purchaser of alcohol in the world, and all American products have been pulled from the shelves.