A new ballot question: How should Canada define its relationship with the U.S.?

These disorienting days, Canadian leaders are responding in real time to a deeply uncertain world.

The day that the president of the United States launched a global commercial war, Alberta Prime Minister Danielle Smith decided to look at the positive side. United States, her wroteHe had decided to “defend most of the free trade agreement … Between our two nations.” And although some tariffs remained in place, “it seems that the worst of this tariff dispute is behind us.”

At least two parts of the last comment could be disputed, that the “worst” is really “behind us”, and that the challenge facing Canada is equivalent to a “tariff dispute.” But he gave him before hope That the current conflict between the United States and Canada could stop until after the federal elections, it is not surprising that she jumped to a minimum of Consuelo for Canada in Wednesday advertisement by Donald Trump.

On the contrary, in a demonstration in Kingston, Ontario, the conservative leader Pierre Poilievre criticized what he called “another unfair attack” by the United States in the Canadian economy. The president, said Pailievre, was “betraying the closest friend in the United States.”

But Pailievre’s phrasing could ask another question: is it fair to describe Canada and the United States as friends? Do we share values, interests and objectives? Does the United States even see someone as a friend? Would it be more exact to say that we are now simply neighbors?

(In an interview with CBC’s Frontburner This week, Jason Stanley, an American scholar in fascism who is moving to Toronto, said that both Canada and Ukraine are now “bordered by autocratic dictatorships.”

On Thursday morning, Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke with journalists in Parliament Hill and stressed the marked language He used a week ago When he said that the “old relationship” with the United States, one based on “deepening the integration of our economies and tense security and military cooperation,” was now “finished.”

“The global economy is fundamentally different today from what was yesterday,” said Carney.

In so many words, it seemed to suggest that the The old world was dying and a new world was struggling to be born.

There is a general agreement that Canada must act urgently in response to what is happening in the United States. But Carney’s statements point to what could be a division in the way in which liberal and conservative leaders see, or at least talk about the tumult that is being developed.

Pailievre explains your approach

In a speech organized on Wednesday morning, hours before Trump announced his latest tariffs, Pailievre said that, as prime minister, he would propose the president to accelerate a review and renegotiation of the United States-Mexico (Cusma) agreement of Canada-Mexico. And while that was happening, both Canada and the United States would accept to suspend their tariffs from each other.

At least it is not clear that Donald Trump would bow towards such a good faith, he tax Tariffs during Cusma negotiation in 2018, and even maintained those import taxes in their place for a while after Canada and the United States had accepted a new commercial agreement.

Perhaps for May, when Pailievre would be hypothetically in a position to make its offer, economic pain in the United States would be such that Trump would be looking for an excuse to go back. But if Trump sees tariffs as a permanent element of the new economic and fiscal agenda of his country, the notion of free trade with the United States can now be an illusion.

Pailievre said that in any renegotiation a series of “red lines” would draw. He, he said, would protect control over “our border, our security, our resources, our farmers, including our farmers administered by supplies, our fresh water, our automotive workers … Our sovereignty, our laws, our currency, our dollar, our land, our waters, our sky, our culture, our official languages ​​… Our resources and indigenous rights.”

To be fair, it is difficult to imagine that any candidate for the position in Canada is chosen with the promise of delivering Canadian control over any of those things.

But the conservative leader said he would have something to offer to Americans: a higher defense expense. More specifically, Pailievre said that “any extra [government] The income generated by the extended trade with the United States will go directly to our Armed Forces. “

“The Canadians observed with anger and anxiety,” says Pailievre by New Trump Rates

The conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, speaking of Kingston, Ontario, on the 12th of the electoral campaign, reacts to the radical tariffs of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, announced on Wednesday.

There is now a generalized agreement on the need to spend more on the Canadian army, and Pailievre promised to spend an amount equivalent to two percent of Canada’s GDP. But is it possible that expanded trade with the United States provides such an increase? And expanded trade with the United States is something that Canada should be pointing?

In His speech of “Canada First” in FebruaryPailievre said the United States had two options.

In the first, the US administration could carry out “an unpaved attack” against the Canadian economy, weakening both countries, forcing Canada to “look for friends anywhere else” and allow “our enemies” to strengthen themselves. On the other hand, Canada and the United States could “trade even more”, cooperate to counteract threats such as fentanyl and “combine with the unfair commercial practices of other countries.”

Pailievre’s offer had something in common with what former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau He had previously suggested – If Donald Trump was really interested in marking a start in a new “golden age” for the United States, then the president should seek to “associate” with Canada in things like critical minerals, energy and other resources. Ontario’s Prime Minister, Doug Ford, has also launched “Am-Can fortress“Promoted as a” renewed strategic alliance “between Canada and the United States.

But Pailievre still believes that the second option is on the table?

Carney says that the old world order “ends”

In his own response on Thursday morning, Carney maintained the possibility that the era of an integrated automotive sector, dating from 1965 Automatic Pact – It could still be saved, but he doubled with the idea that something has changed.

“The global trade system anchored in the United States in which Canada has been based since the end of World War II, a system that is not perfect, has helped offer prosperity for our country for decades, has ended,” he said.

“Our old relationship of constantly deepening integration with the United States has ended. The 80 -year period when the United States adopted the global economic leadership mantle, when it falsified rooted alliances in confidence and mutual respect, and defended the free and open exchange of goods and services, it is over.”

Carney said this was a “tragedy”, but a “reality.” And he said that Canada, under his government, “would assume a leadership role in the construction of a coalition of related countries” that believe in the values ​​of international cooperation and free trade.

The journalists asked them to explain their opinion more about the Canadian-American relationship, Carney said that the United States is “our most important security ally,” although he also said he would seek to diversify the sources of Canada’s military teams. But there must be, he said, “a renegotiation and a reaffirmation of what elements of the commercial relationship, the commercial relationship are found.”

In question | Canada’s response to Trump’s global tariff assault

In question this week: Canada dodges the last wave of Trump global tariffs, but with some sectors that are already staggering, can a victory be considered? How the movements of the president of the United States are changing the federal electoral campaign. And the controversial candidates are torn from the ballot.

He emphasized that “part of what our relationship [that] It has been based on … a degree of integration between our economies, our commerce increasing Customs Union With the United States. As a general approach, said Carney, approaching the United States would entail “huge risks.”

While Pailievre also advocates reducing Canada’s dependence in the United States, the Language of Carney, along with some of its policy proposals, including new investments in the automotive sector, it is decidedly more marked.

At the same time, significantly reorient Canada to other countries it would hardly be easy; If it were, some first prime minister would probably have done so. Now more than half a century has passed since Mitchell Sharp’s “third option” was briefly a point of fascination.

Rhetorical differences between Carney and Pailievre could speak with a new division in Canadian public opinion. According to him Angus Reid Institute80 percent of liberal supporters think Canada should “play hard” with Donald Trump. But 50 percent of conservative supporters think that Canada should try to negotiate lower tariffs.

Now it is well established that no Canadian leader is interested in being Governor of State 51 of the United States. But the next three weeks of this federal electoral campaign could be to begin to answer the broader question of how Canadians should think of their neighbor and the world beyond this continent.