Abstract
A curated collection of sociological essays on the fraying of an international relationship built on years of trust, reciprocity, mutual understanding, and shared reality, this special section considers U.S.- Canada relations from the Canadian perspective.
A curated collection of essays on the decay of a longstanding international relationship, this special section considers U.S.- Canadian relations from the Canadian perspective.
What happens when a relationship built on years of trust, reciprocity, mutual understanding, and shared reality is suddenly frayed? The United States and Canada share the world’s largest undefended border, and through decades of free trade, have built a strong friendship. Then came Donald Trump’s second term as U.S. president. In what some call a hardline bargaining strategy, Trump immediately began referring to Canada as the “51st state” and its beleaguered then-Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, as its “Governor.”
One social media outburst after another threatened trade-crippling tariffs, some backpedaled almost immediately, others still on the table. Meanwhile, as Trump’s Administration took form and began attacking U.S. institutions, including higher education, Americans started looking north and wondering if they wouldn’t prefer to become Canadians, instead.
As both U.S. and Canadian citizens, Amin and I have a unique vantage point on the question. We cannot know what someone born and raised in the True North feels when they hear Trump denigrate their home country, but we understand the pangs of terror that come with even imagining a U.S. invasion (let alone the seemingly Sisyphean act of colonizing a country whose population rivals that of California, spread across a landmass bigger than the United States’ own). We cannot know what would become of Canadian life, institutions, and culture should Trump’s threats prove possible, but we can try to understand the shifts already taking place in response to the wild gesticulations of a suddenly unstable friend.
It is within this context that we present a special collection of essays featuring three proudly Canadian voices: Liam Swiss (current president of the Canadian Sociological Association), David Tindall, and Palavi Banerjee. We asked what sociology could teach us about the challenges facing a country that is dependent on one that has aggressively turned heel. We also suggested they consider the possible positive outcomes that might accrue from the quagmire of cross-border strain.
In the first essay, Liam Swiss walks us through the broad consequences that Trump’s election has already had for Canada. Unlike the United States, Canada has a weaker federal system and strong provincial politics. Could Trump’s election—and the subsequent swearing into office of a new Liberal Prime Minister—upend expectations?
Next, David Tindall details the political fallout of Trump’s election, adding historical context that paints a picture not of an always-harmonious relationship between the United States and Canada, but one already tested in the past. Indeed, it is easy to forget that things were not always rosy between the two nations. The history of prior cleavages, Tindall shows, may hold powerful lessons for imaging the future of cooperation.
The final piece, by Pallavi Banerjee, takes us to the institutional level, exploring the pressures higher education has faced amid the rise of right-wing electoral threats and policy changes since the first Trump Administration. From the outside, she writes, Canada seems committed to higher education. We, too, can attest to qualitatively different attitudes in Canada with regard to universities in general and the humanities and social sciences in particular. Yet, changes are already afoot. Will educational ideals erode, or can Canada seize the moment, differentiate itself from the United States, and see its academy flourish anew?
We’re a Sovereign Country, eh!
The election of the Mark Carney Liberal federal government in Canada in April 2025 was astounding—just a few months prior, the opposition Conservative party had up to a 30% lead in public opinion polls. Three key factors led to this outcome: the resignation of Justin Trudeau, the re-election of Donald Trump in the United States, and Trump’s threat of both tariffs against and the annexation of Canada. The Liberal victory is a classic illustration of sociologist Louis A. Coser’s principle that threats posed by an external group lead to increased cohesion within a group.
This trifecta of events motivated the public to re-evaluate the relative strengths and weaknesses of Canada’s main federal political parties. (As background, it might be noted that the Canadian Conservative leader, Pierre Polievre, had he been an American politician, would feel right at home as part of the Freedom Caucus in Congress.) If Kamala Harris had won the U.S. presidential election, or if Trump had magically morphed into a soft-spoken, mild-mannered centrist, then Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative party would have most likely won the election. But Carney and the Liberals were seen as better able to deal with the threats posed by Trump and the United States. Further, Canadians were increasingly dismayed by what they saw south of the border, and they concluded that Polievre’s approach was similar. Several contextual foundational factors might be useful to introduce for non-Canadians. As such I will endeavour to ignore the advice of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who once said, “this is not a time to commit sociology.”
Canadians do not want to become Americans. On average, they are already better off than Americans.
the fall of justin trudeau
Prior to the 2025 election, Justin Trudeau’s government was deeply unpopular. Successful governments tend to have a shelf life of about eight to 10 years, and Trudeau’s was in its 10th year. It had made its share of mistakes, accrued numerous scandals, and had a leader who had become a widely unpopular leader. Further, Canada was suffering from many of the same ills as other Western countries, including an increased cost of living, housing shortages, homelessness, substance abuse crises, growing regionalism, and political polarization. For several years, a growing chorus asked Trudeau to step down. This issue came to a head before Trump was inaugurated, and Trudeau reluctantly agreed to resign.
trump’s threats
The threat of severe tariffs coupled with that of annexation was a double whammy that shocked most Canadians, catalyzing both wide-spread individual and collective action. Many Americans downplay the effect of these threats, with even progressive sociologists expressing sentiments like, “Don’t you see Trump is just trolling you?” But Canadians feel deeply betrayed. Ontario Premier Doug Ford said the proposed tariffs were “like a family member stabbing you right in the heart.” It is likely that Trump’s threats will harden into a long-term loss of trust of the United States by Canadians. Recent polling provides some evidence: a February 2025 Leger poll reported that 27% of Canadians now see the United States as an “enemy” country, and a Spring 2025 Pew Research Centre poll noted that 59% of Canadians saw the United States as their country’s greatest threat. In a May 2025 ResearchCo survey, only 26% of Canadians had a positive opinion of the United States, down 28 points since July 2024.
In the face of Trump’s unprovoked aggressions, Canadian practices have changed quickly. Normally, Canadian flags are relatively scarce. Typically seen only on government buildings, flags suddenly began being displayed on homes, in stores, and on cars. People began boycotting American products, too—another ResearchCo survey, from February 2025, found that more than three in five Canadians said they would avoid purchasing goods originating in the United States—leading grocery stores to label Canadian products with flags. Alcohol imported from the United States has been banned in Ontario and pulled from the shelves of liquor stores in many other parts of Canada. Travel to the United States is evaporating, too: a March 2025 USA Today story reported that flight bookings from Canada for the summer of 2025 were down by 70%. My fellow contributors to this issue provide additional examples.
canada doesn’t want to be the 51st state?
Aside from a few prominent people, including television personality Kevin O’Leary, psychologist Jordan Peterson, hockey great Wayne Gretzky, and, of course, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, most Canadians do not want to become Americans. Even before Trump’s recent antagonisms, 83% of Canadians surveyed in a 2022 Environics poll strongly disagreed with the statement: “Canada and the United States should someday unite into one country.”
Courtesy Amin Ghaziani
Canadians know that, on average, they are already better off than Americans. Statistics indicate, for instance, that Canadians have higher life expectancies (and are less likely to be killed by firearms), higher levels of education, higher levels of health, higher levels of mental health, and higher levels of equality than do Americans. They’re happier, too. So why would they want their country to become the 51st state? Indeed, as Pallavi Banerjee notes in her essay, prominent American academics are already fleeing the United States for Canada.
canada’s distinctiveness and identity
Let’s consider some key elements of Canadian culture and identity. A core part of English Canadian identity is “not being American.” Canadian politics scholar Richard Nimijean has said: “Inevitably, a Canadian’s sense of identity relates to areas that demonstrate a sense of Canadian distinctiveness vis-a -vis the United States. In many cases, there is an embedded sense that the Canadian way of life is superior to that of the Americans.”
Over the years, commentators have asserted that, relative to the United States, Canada has a more collectivist orientation. This is a central theme of the book Continental Divide, wherein political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset talks about key historical differences, including the importance of the War of Independence in the United States contrasted with Canada’s retaining of ties and values connected to Europe. (On this point, for symbolic reasons, newly minted Prime Minister Mark Carney asked King Charles III—Canada’s king—to read the Speech from the Throne, thus opening the next session of Parliament. This was the first time Canada’s Parliament had been opened by the monarch in 50 years.) These differences are manifested in the countries’ institutions. For instance, Lipset and others have noted that Canada embraced the “cultural mosaic” model of integration, rather than the U.S. “melting pot” approach (indeed, John Porter’s The Vertical Mosaic is a canonical Canadian sociology text). Canadians also take great pride in things like their country’s public health care system, abundance of nature, relative safety and security, and Canada’s role in UN peacekeeping missions.
canada-us relations and past conflict
In his essay, Liam Swiss includes a famous (in Canada, at least) quote from a former Prime Minister that involves an elephant. It nicely highlights the asymmetrical awareness across the populations of Canada and the United States.
These two countries have been at war, and they have had conflicts of various other sorts in the past. Take for example, the War of 1812, which saw the United States declare war on what now constitutes Canada, and was repelled. Eventually, British troops even set fire to the White House.
Relations have been mostly cooperative over the past 200 years, but there have been a variety of frictions. Tensions arose, for instance, between Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and President Richard Nixon who called Trudeau a number of derogatory things, including “an asshole”—on tape. Trudeau famously replied, “I’ve been called worse things by better people.”
During the second Iraq War, members of the Bush Administration complained about Canada taking a pass on the war. Then-Prime Minister Chretien stated that he was not convinced Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, and he insisted that Canada would only participate in a UN-authorized mission. Paul Cellucci, the U.S. ambassador, indicated that his country was disappointed with Canada.
However, echoing Liam Swiss’s observation, I can confidently assert that nothing in the past 200 years compares to the current situation. Indeed, in a recent op-ed in the New York Times, Canadian writer Stephen Marche states: “Canada is living through an era of acute, sustained, profound and abiding rage. The source is President Trump; the object is the United States.”
In response to recent events, Canadians have rallied around the mantra, “Elbows Up,” a hockey-inspired call to fight back against the United States. Spectators at hockey games in Canada have booed the Star-Spangled Banner. American observers can expect more prickly responses from their northern neighbors if the threats initiated by their president continue. Within Canada, it seems plausible this growing animosity will develop into a new wave of Canadian Nationalism. It has also reignited regional separatist movements—notably in Alberta—that the federal government will have to respond to. And, politically and economically, it has energized the federal government’s efforts to strengthen ties with Europe, Asia, and elsewhere, thus reducing Canada’s dependence on the United States. These changes are likely to persist beyond the tenure of both the current Canadian and American administrations.
Sleeping with the Trumpian Elephant
Imagine the Governor of New York claiming that they were tired of subsidizing New Jersey, that New Jersey did not work as a real State, and that New Jersey was really nothing more than the cherished 63rd County of New York in waiting. Ludicrous, no? Then consider that this colonizing rhetoric is being unleashed amid economic tariffs and policies targeting many of New Jersey’s most central industries and key trade relationships. Further insanity? New Jerseyans would rightly be livid. Would New Yorkers pay much attention? Would they call out the misguided treatment of their neighbors? Would it be laughed off as a joke in poor taste, made by an idiosyncratic politician? In this imaginary scenario, the impact and results of New York’s colonial aspirations are unclear. Yet, this is the scenario facing Canada and Canadians only months into the 2nd Trump regime.
Is there a logic to Trump’s call to annex Canada? Not one that most Canadians perceive. Are Trump’s musings fundamentally reshaping the nature of Canada-U.S. relations? Undoubtedly. In what follows, I briefly examine the impact of Trump’s 51st-State rhetoric and outline its real impacts on what was once the closest international relationship between any two countries.
the disrespect
From the beginning of Trump’s Canada-as-51st State musings, the relationship of separate but equal neighbors on either side of the so-called “longest undefended border in the world” shifted in its balance. This was most evident in Trump’s belittling of Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau throughout much of 2024 and early 2025 as “Governor Trudeau.” Perceived by some in the media as little more than playful needling inspired by political differences, many Canadians instead read this as a slight against the country. The idea that a Prime Minister of Canada could get away with repeatedly calling the President of the United States the “Premier of our soon-to-be cherished 11th Province” is laughable expressly because a Canadian leader would never be so cavalier as to disrespect the leader of our closest ally and primary trading partner. Though Trump has seemingly dispensed with the “Governor” title in dealing with Canada’s new Prime Minister since March 2025, the demeaning jibes intended to belittle Canada’s leaders have made their mark. Further, the disrespect shown by Trump to his Canadian counterpart has continued, including when Trump made an abrupt departure from the Canada-hosted G7 summit in June 2025 under the pretense of “urgent matters” (these later appeared to be little more than the erection of a novelty flagpole on the White House lawn).
iStockPhoto // wildpixel
While Canada is still America’s closest neighbor, the disrespect cast by Trump’s recent statements and behavior have been anything but neighborly.
the coloniality
All the talk of Canada being absorbed into the United States might appear, to Americans, little more than the after-dinner ramblings of an opinionated uncle. But coming from the so-called “leader of the free world” this discourse hits differently, especially in the middle of Trump’s attacks on global trade. First, by calling into question Canadian sovereignty and suggesting that “Canada does not work as a real country,” Trump aims to delegitimize Canada as a sovereign nation. The implication is that Canada is a failure and must be fixed by being brought into the American embrace. Now, Canadians know full well the impacts of colonialism and live them daily. Not so tongue-and-cheek twists on the Canadian national anthem change the lyrics from “Our home and native land” to “Our home ON native land” for good reason. Canada is a settler colonial state still trying to sort out its own colonial mess through the various initiatives and processes linked to the project of settler-Indigenous Truth and Reconciliation. Still, none of this has not prepared Canadians to become the target of the colonial musings of a U.S. President obsessed with annexing their country and “erasing the artificially drawn line” that is the U.S.-Canada border.
It does not take much to imagine similar words being uttered by Vladimir Putin ahead of any of Russia’s recent invasions of Ukraine. While an American military operation to control Canada seems far-fetched, the rhetoric is not far removed, and Canadians feel the existential angst it inspires.
the resistance
Canadians have not taken Trump’s attacks on their sovereignty and livelihoods lightly. Canadians are voting with their feet. What country is the United States’ largest source of international tourism? Canada. How much has Canadian travel to the United States dropped since January 2025? Well, in March 2025, the CBC reported a 17% decline in Canadians traveling to the United States over the year prior. Once many Canadians’ destination of choice for business and vacation travel, the United States has fast become the last place Canadians wish to go. In fact, the Canadian government launched the “Canada Strong Pass,” an effort to promote travel and tourism within Canada rather than in the United States.
The increased difficulties for Canadians entering the United States under the current Trump regime have also complicated matters, leading other Canadian groups, including the Canadian Association of University Teachers, to recommend avoiding travel to the country whenever possible. The souring of our historically close relationship goes much further than the economic effects of an informal travel boycott or travel advisories, though. Recent months have seen American liquors pulled from Canadian shelves, the rise of retaliatory tariffs, limits and restrictions on exports of key resources to the United States, and increasing reports of Canadians looking to exit the U.S. real estate market. Even amid “TACO” rhetoric—the idea that “Trump Always Chickens Out” of his various threats and punitive measures in his current global trade war—Canadians and Canadian businesses are left at the mercy of his waffling, backpedalling, and escalating tantrums.
Canada is a country that has struggled with examples of “foreign election interference” in recent years, and so it is ironic that the most direct effects of Trump’s colonial rhetoric may have inadvertently been a deus ex machina-like foreign intervention in the 2025 Canadian election. Coming into 2025, as David Tindall notes in his essay, the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) and their leader Pierre Poilievre had been all but anointed as the government- and Prime Minister-in-waiting by much of the Canadian public, pundits, and polls. A January 20, 2025 CBC-reported average of major public opinion polls had the CPC sitting at 44.8% of intended vote, while the ruling Liberal Party and its leader Justin Trudeau garnered only 21.9% support. By the end of the recent Canadian election campaign in April 2025, however, these numbers had swung wildly. Trudeau had been replaced as Liberal leader and Prime Minister by an Oxford PhD in Economics and former Wall Street financier turned Central Bank Head (for both Canada and the UK), Mark Carney. The Liberals won the 2025 election with 43.8% of the vote.
Like so many things that Trump has broken, Canada-U.S. relations are feeling the full effect of his “every twitch and grunt.”
It goes without saying that Trump’s provocations played a pivotal role in shaping this election outcome. As seen in Trump’s “Truth Social” posts, even on Canada’s election day, Trump was encouraging Canadians to vote for someone who would make his 51st-State dream a reality. Instead, the CPC remain in opposition and Poilievre suffered the humiliation of losing his own Parliamentary seat of 20 years. The CPC was seen by many Canadians as too aligned with Trump, therefore the weaker option when it came to resisting Trump’s double dose of colonial rhetoric and trade war escalation. Rather than voting for new political leadership and inaugurating a Conservative government after 10 years of Liberal rule, Canadians voted against Trump, electing the party and the leader they saw as best suited to resist his chicanery.
Whether the 2025 election would have played out this way had Trump never begun his appeals to recruit Canada as the 51st State, we will never know. Like with Canadians voting with their feet by avoiding travel and with their wallets by boycotting American goods, many Canadians seemed inspired to vote to protect some of the key values and beliefs about what it is to be Canadian and to make a show of resistance to the Trumpian ideology that has started to seep into Canadian Conservative politics.
the elephant twitches and grunts
In 1969, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau famously said during a visit to Washington, D.C. to meet with President Richard Nixon: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.” In the more than 55 years since, sleeping next to the elephant has likely never been more unsettling.
Have there been prior challenges in the Canadian-American relationship? Undoubtedly. Never, however, has the relationship been so thoroughly undermined by the actions of one political leader and those who perpetuate a rhetoric that fundamentally calls into question the existence of the other country.
Like so many things that Trump has broken throughout his lifetime, Canada-U.S. relations are feeling the full effect of his “every twitch and grunt.” The most likely solution to the disrespect, colonial aspirations, and neighbourly abuse is that Canadians will attempt to simply ride it out.
Four years from now, we can only hope that the American elephant has awakened from its bad dream and chosen to elect political leaders keen to rebuild and strengthen our countries’ historically close partnership. For now, the Trumpian nightmare continues.
Can Trump Backlash Reinvigorate Canadian Higher Education?
I ended my 2022 book The Opportunity Trap with a prediction: “Trump is no longer in office, but the present and the future remain Trumpian.” What I meant is that the discursive core of global politics has, since Trump’s first term, fundamentally shifted to “become more populist, combative, nativist and antiminority.” Trump 2.0 has sadly lived up to this prediction in the most unsettling and odious ways. From empowering oligarchs to waging wars against higher education, imprisoning students advocating for Palestinian rights, undertaking mass deportations and immigrant detention without due process, and attempting to suspend Habeas Corpus for immigrants, Trump has already moved the United States to the doorstep of patrimonial fascism.
As most of the world steadily moved (politically) right, we in Canada were bracing for a Trump-like ultra-right-wing leadership. The previous Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, resigned earlier this year amid political uncertainty and Trump’s aggressions, including threats to annex Canada as the 51st U.S. state and impose economically debilitating trade tariffs. Yet Mark Carney, riding an anti-Trump wave, led us to an unexpected political turnaround and a Liberal minority government won in the April 2025 federal elections.
Carney’s win brought a sigh of relief to many liberals, including most academics in Canada. Still, Trump’s relentless attacks on higher education remain deeply concerning for Canadian academics. As I have argued in my own research on Canadian immigration, our country’s economic and immigration policies have historically been reactive to the political and economic tides in the United States. This was apparent in Canadian federal policies of the last decade: during Trump’s first administration, for instance, Canada increased its international student intake, and following a post-COVID economic downturn and a massive 2023 wave of U.S. tech layoffs, Canada expanded the Federal Skilled Worker’s program, inviting more foreign skilled workers onto our shores.
But over the last 24 months, there have been some notable and disturbing shifts in Canadian institutional politics at the federal and provincial levels. Responding to rising right-wing sentiments across North America during Trump’s reelection campaign, University administrations supported by conservative provincial governments appeared to impose Trumpist policies. Just before Trump’s 2025 inauguration, Alberta’s universities dismantled the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) offices that were instituted in 2020 and replaced their efforts with what Albertan universities are calling an Access, Community and Belonging approach. The 2024 student encampments for peace in Gaza and Palestine and their demands to disclose and divest from Israel’s military were met with brutal police violence in Alberta and strong opposition by university administration in other provinces, much like in the United States. At the federal level, Canada moved from its open-door immigration policies to a more restrictive policy that directly impacted Canadian universities by, for example, capping international student intake year over year (reducing the Study Permits issued by 35% in 2024 and an additional 10% in 2025) and making the requirements for new student visas more restrictive. In March 2024, the Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) announced that, by 2026, the government will take steps to reduce the percentage of temporary residents to 5% of Canada’s population. These protectionist measures have reportedly led to growing deficits, hiring freezes, service reductions for students, and layoffs in universities. The research landscape in Canada is further affected by Trump’s indiscriminate cuts to university funding and federal research grants; many collaborative research projects between Canadian and U.S. researchers have come to a standstill as American funding disappears, thus impacting the scholars and students, particularly international students, working on those projects. Trump’s arbitrary tariffs, however they may come to pass, are likely to drive up the cost of higher education for students in Canada, too, as the ancillary costs of education, like research equipment and educational materials, rise—and that will put universities further out of reach for economically marginalized students.
Some pilot interviews I have conducted with international doctoral students in Canada are pointing at ad hoc implementation of the “Canadian First” policy for academic hiring in the past few months. This policy, in place since 1981, required Canadian universities to limit academic job searches to Canadians before opening them to non-citizen applicants. In 2001, a reform made it possible for Canadian universities to simultaneously advertise and recruit in Canada and abroad, across all disciplines. Our study is indicating that many non-U15 universities (those higher education institutions outside the 15 leading Canadian research universities) are precluding international doctoral students who are on study permits from application pools for faculty positions. This is a dangerously nativist trend that will make Canadian higher education more parochial and lower quality by stymying the chances of some of the best doctoral students, primarily those from the Global South, to reach the professoriate in Canada.
All of these changes indicate that Canadian universities are vulnerable to the Trumpist agenda to cripple universities’ functions as institutions of free thought, universal intellectual exchange, and research innovation.
iStockPhoto // Vepar5
However, Trump’s assault on higher education also has the potential to re-energize the Canadian university ecosystem. Famous American scholars like Timothy Snyder, Marci Shore, and Jason Stanley have already jumped ship to Canada. The number of graduate applications from U.S. citizens to universities in Canada has increased considerably. University of British Columbia (UBC) received 27% more graduate applicants from the U.S. citizens this year and made special accommodation for late U.S. applications. Universities in Canada are more likely to see academic job applicants from the United States, especially from those scholars on precarious immigration status or at risk of losing academic freedom.
Carney’s government has the opportunity to strengthen Canadian higher education by creating a contrast with the Trumpist agenda and encouraging further academic migration from the United States.
If these trends continue, my prediction is that new Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government will seize the opportunity to strengthen Canadian higher education by creating a contrast with the Trumpist agenda for higher education and encouraging further academic migration from the United States, much like Trudeau did during Trump’s first term. The opening up of previously unavailable federal research funding to international student applicants since March of this year is perhaps an indication of a more global approach to higher education. My hope, however, is that Canada, rather than merely respond to political tides to its south (neoliberal at best, imperialist and fascist at worst), will chart its own radical and transformational vision for education at all levels.