The Current - Trump’s threats are a big boost for patriotism in Canada

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

The threat of tariffs and Donald Trump’s jibes about Canada becoming "the 51st state” have sparked a surge of unity and patriotism in this country. Author Andrew Potter and entrepreneur Arlene Dickinson discuss what it means to be Canadian in this moment of uncertainty.

When a body is discovered 10 miles out to sea, it sparks a mind-blowing police investigation. There's a man living in this address in the name of a deceased. He's one of the most wanted men in the world. This isn't really happening. Officers are finding large sums of money. It's a tale of murder, skullduggery and international intrigue. So who really is he? I'm Sam Mullins and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncovered, available now.

This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, it's Matt here. Thanks for listening to The Current wherever you're getting this podcast. Before we get to today's show, wonder if I might ask a favor of you if you could hit the follow button on whatever app you're using. There is a lot of news that's out there these days. We're trying to help you make sense of it all and give you a bit of a break from some

of that news too. So if you already follow the program, thank you. And if you have done that, maybe you could leave us a rating or review as well. The whole point of this is to let more listeners find our show and perhaps find some of that information that's so important in these really tricky times. So thanks for all of that, appreciate it. And onto today's show. From sports fans booing at the sound

of the American national anthem to the boycott US made everything and buy Canadian movement, Donald Trump's trade war has inspired nationalist pride here in Canada. And by the way, we're not the 51st state. We're a sovereign, independent country. Our leader deserves to be treated with respect, and we deserve to be treated with respect,

and that's the way we want to proceed. Canada's ambassador to the United Nations, Bob Ray, made that case this week on Fox News. He's just one of many Canadian leaders who's been standing up for our country on U.S. media. Here's the Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, on CNN. We're Canadians, we're strong, we're resilient, we're proud, and we're going to stand up for what's right.

And what's right is making sure that we protect our economy, protect the people, protect the families and protect the communities right across this great country of ours. Trump's terror threats have not only struck a nerve with Canadians, they've also inspired a sudden wave of unity. In this moment, we can be really proud of the fact that we don't take the same aggressive tactics internationally and, you know, we treat our partners as partners. We're known for being polite, but we can still take a stand, so. I feel like this is a good chance for everyone to kind of come together and be on the same

page. It kind of sucks, but I feel like the nation's never been more together about a certain thing than it is right now, which over the last couple of years we've been so divided, so this feels kind of good that we can finally take one stand together, that we're going to be Canada first and we're going to make it happen. I'm proud to be Canadian for the stuff that we have, the rights and freedoms that we have. There's no place like Canada, especially when Trump says Canada should become the 51st day. I'm like, hell no. Something is happening in this country to talk about this surge of patriotism and what's going on.

We have been joined by two proud to be Canadians, Andrew Potter and Arlene Dickinson. Andrew Potter is the author of On Decline, Stagnation, Nostalgia, and Why Every Year is the Worst One Ever. He's also a contributor to The Line, a commentary forum for Canadians. And Arlene Dickinson is an entrepreneur and investor, a member of the federal government's advisory council on Canada-US relations,

and of course a star on Dragon's Den. Good morning to you both. Good morning. Good morning. There used to be, Andrew, that old CBC Morning Sideline. It was a contest that Peter Zosky ran, As Canadian As, and the answer was, As Canadian As Possible Under the Circumstances. What do you think is happening now? What strikes you about the moment that we're in right now? Well, it's pretty clear. I mean Canadians are never more united when than when they're facing some kind of external threat and that's largely

a threat or some kind of hostility from from the Americans. And so it's not surprising to me that there's been this sort of surge of patriotism. I wish it didn't have to be the case for a lot of reasons, but I'm kind of looking, I'm thinking, okay, this is great, but it's about time because right before Christmas, so right around Christmas, there was this, you know, a triple hit of extremely bad news on the patriotism front or the nationalism front. Angus Reid has a survey that came out saying that only 34% of Canadians are now proud to be Canadian, right?

That's down from 78% in 1985. Nanos had a poll saying that one-third of Canadians feel deep anger toward the federal government. And there was a poll saying as many as 40% of Canadians aged 18 to 35 would vote to join the United States if they got citizenship and their assets at dollar par. So you know, the surge of patriotism is great, but there's a lot of rot under the surface that needs to be fixed. It's interesting the Angus Reid Institute has put out new data suggesting that that number has jumped since December.

Up to 44% now of Canadians who feel proud of their country. Arlene, you wrote on Facebook that you love this country, you can't sit by and watch this unfold without speaking up and that you were speaking out not as a non-partisan, as somebody who believes in our country, not pro-liberal, not pro-conservative, but pro-Canada. What do you make of the moment that's happening right now? I think there's been... Canadians are galvanizing and realizing what we have, and I think there has been a complacency in this country,

born because things have been relatively, you know, the same, right? We see the same things every day, we feel the same things, we haven't really been pushed into any corners, and because we are so nice, maybe that's it, we haven't got our elbows up at all as a result, but I think what's happening right now is we are galvanizing. I like to use the word resolve.

I think there is a new resolve in the country to doing what's right to protect what we have, and, you know, Matt, that old saying, you don't know what you've got till you start to lose it or till you've lost it is very true at this moment. Canadians are really starting to understand and believe and think that we can't lose what we

have and they, they recognize that while we have problems and we do, um, that we can fix those problems together and we can't let somebody else come in and run our country. What in particular that you've seen over the last couple of days, Arlene, makes you proud? What have I seen the last few days that's made me proud?

I've seen this amazing, um, loyalty to Canadian products, you know, and services, this, this, this resurgence of people who are looking and seeking out Canadian goods and services and thinking about how we can support entrepreneurs in this country, thinking about how we can support entrepreneurs in this country, thinking about how we can support businesses in this country and thinking about how we can choose Canadian as opposed to choosing other products and services. And so I mean that's been obvious.

I mean everybody's been doing that and I think people are talking about it more and they're sharing it more. But more importantly I'm seeing this and not not more importantly, but as importantly, you're seeing people talking about it and being proud of the nation and vocalizing what they feel. Which is, you know, we sometimes can be reluctant to do that, Matt.

We sometimes can be very scared to voice our opinions in a social media world where people pounce on you and can make you feel like your opinion isn't valid. But what you're seeing now is this pride that is actually shining through in how people are discussing it and talking about it. Andrew, why do you think it took for Donald Trump to threaten a trade war and gobbling us up into the 51st state for people to rally around the flag in some ways?

That's a good question. I mean, other than sort of platitudes saying, you know, we're complacent, we're this and that. I think Canadians have, over the last decade, you know, sort of, I think, I think ultimately Canada is sort of like a relationship. And, you know, you have to do the work. And you need to put in the time you need to put in the maintenance. And I think we just simply stopped doing the maintenance on the national identity, the national unity front about a decade ago. Leading up to the Canada 150 celebrations, there was some really interesting polling that StatsCan was doing about asking Canadians what sort of things made them proud to be

Canadian and what symbols and so on. And people ranked at the very top things like the charter,ter, the Flag, the Anthem, Healthcare, and so on. And I think a lot of that stuff has been allowed to either be denigrated or wither away a bit, especially around the Charter. You can see how various provinces are undermining it when the Flag spends an entire summer at half staff, maybe for good reasons or not, but that sort of affects Canadian unity. So there's a lot of things that

went on. And then you have, coming out of COVID in particular, a lot of people in a lot of provinces taking a very transactional approach to the country and a very mercenary approach. So there's a lot of unhappiness that's been brewing and we just haven't been doing the work at either the institutional level or the cultural level to sustain the country. What do you mean a transactional relationship

with the country? I mean, people taking a view that the country, I mean, there's this view that Quebec's sort of quasi-nationalists have always taken, what they call it, profitable federalism, right? That it's worth staying in Canada only to the extent to which you can get something out of it. And I think that attitude has percolated across the entire federation now, where people are

looking at Canada and saying, well, what can we get out of that, either for our region or what are we giving and what are we getting in return and sort of weighing the pros and cons of it all. And that also came out of the Angus-Reed poll where it suggested that it looked at how immigrants were attached to the country. And I think something like over half the immigrants that they surveyed said that they were attached to Canada only to the extent to which it gave them a good standard of living and good health

care and so on. There was no fundamental attachment. It was simply very transactional. And that if they could get a better deal somewhere else, they would go somewhere else. This is not healthy. It's not healthy at all. Everyone's sort of weighing up. you know, that if you're in a relationship, right, if you see your relationship

that way as sort of what you're putting in Brazil, you're getting out, um, it's not going to last. Can I ask you about just one last piece on this? And this is around the pride in the country. There has been, you mentioned the last decade, there has been a conversation, certainly over the last decade, it's gone beyond that as well, where people have been reckoning with the past

in this country and talking about the things that have happened in Canada's past that perhaps might not make them feel proud about the country or feel attached to the country. What is the larger impact of that on how we broadly think of the idea of Canada? I think there was a lot of well overdue reckoning about a lot of things, Indigenous reconciliation in particular, and I think what happened is, quite honestly, I think the federal government recognized that that was overdue, but I think leaned too heavily into the the negative aspects of it without Trying to carry a conversation about how we move forward positively as a country about that

So I think a lot of the negativity sort of got baked into our self-understanding And it wasn't it wasn't there was no shift into a more positive story about how Canada could could move forward on this And I think that's that's had a very toxic effect on the country In 2017 it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Arlene, when you see Canadians booing Americans at hockey games, and people were saying the last time this happened maybe was during the Gulf War when Canada did not go and fight in the Gulf War. But people can't really remember that. That often the other example is, you know, the singer's microphone cuts out and Canadians pick up in the rink and continue singing the Star Spangled Banner for that vocalist. What did you make of that? I think it's a reflection again of people's frustrations and their pride and them trying to articulate it.

Just to what Andrew just said, listen, I think that Team Canada is a reflection of the provinces and the territories and the premiers and everyday Canadians and business leaders and everybody coming together to do what's right for the country. So in the past, while there has been this division and this desire to protect what we can do, and it's every premier's job to protect their provinces

in the way that they can, but not at the expense of the country. What you're seeing now is that those things are all starting to merge together and people are talking about them and coming together to try and do what's best for the nation. And I think that's what shifted is this desire for people to express themselves back to, why are they booing? It's an expression. People are frustrated. People are angry.

They're feeling very offended by what's happened and they're expressing in the way that they can. I would say also that Canada is not broken. I hear that too much. Canada is not broken. It's just unfinished. We have a job to do and we need to do it. What does that mean, that it's unfinished? Because, and not to get too deep into politics, but that's a narrative that has received a lot of attention and perhaps a lot of purchase as well from some Canadians.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's, again, without getting too political because I'm not a pundit, but I would say that it's easy to say that our problems are the fault of one government or another. I mean, I think that happens. And yes, for sure, leadership matters, and policy matters, and elections matter. But the truth is, we get what we tolerate. We get what we tolerate.

At the end of the day, waiting for the next election to fix everything is not going to be what we need to do. We have been quiet for too long and a great country isn't built on passive frustration. It's built on active engagement. So I think we need better policies. We need stronger leadership. We need a future that works for all

Canadians. This is what I mean when I talk about unfinished. There is work to do but that work will only happen if Canadians get engaged and not wait for somebody else to fix our problems, not look to the government to always be the solution. And if the government's not doing what we want, we need to be actively engaged to make sure

the government hears what we need. Andrew, how much of Canadian identity is currently shaped by the fact that we're not American? Well, most of it, right? Most of it? Well, but I mean, but I don't mean in the straight up, oh, we're not American, and it stops there. The problem with Canadians is they don't understand, the problem with Canadians, the problem with

a lot of Canadians is that we don't fully appreciate the extent to which not being American has been baked into what this country has been about since before Confederation. John Rawls and Saul used to, when people would say we're a young country, he would say no we're not. And he would say look, if you start with 1791, right, the the Constitution Act of 1791, the one that created Upper and Lower Canada, as that sort of founding understanding of what this country was about versus what was going on in the south of the border in the other British colonies. Canada has the longest, one of the longest constitutional traditions in the world. We're older than virtually every European country in a largely uninterrupted constitutional tradition. And that was very much not what the Americans

were doing, right? So when I say our identity shaped by not being American, it's a refusal from even before confederation, starting with the American Revolution, falling by the War of 1812 to say, no, we're not down with your project, we have something else we're doing, right? Can I ask you about, I mean, there's a symbol of that, and the symbol of that is the flag in many ways. What do you think the Canadian flag means today?

There are people who feel as though the flag has been co-opted in some ways. What do you think the Canadian flag means today? There are people who feel as though the flag has been co-opted in some ways, but linked to protest movements, the Ottawa protests, what have you. You might see it on the back of a truck and below the flag you might see a sticker that says F Trudeau on it. What does the flag mean now, do you think? Well, so it's a very good question because there was a very important and under of call it the left. That is, nationalists in Canada were largely on the left and left-wing governments got a lot of traction in sort of portraying conservatives as sort of pro-American or willing to sell out the country and so on. So, which is why liberals were always wrapping themselves in the flag. Like Jean Chrétien used to just wrap, Canada's the best, Canada's the best, right? He never stopped talking about that.

And so the Liberal Party of Canada owned sort of the flag for a very long time. That changed fundamentally, and I'm not trying to get too political about it, like cause and effect, but under the Trudeau government, and largely with a lot of the discourse around Canada 150 and reconciliation and so on, Canadians on the left stopped feeling attachment to the country and that came to a head during the convoy crisis when

you saw a lot of flag waving or upside down flag waving or Canadian flags sewn on to American flags being waved by the convoy protesters. But what had happened I think was that simply there had been in abandonment of nationalism on the left. They simply just sort of stopped having part of the country and that created a vacuum that was taken over by the right. And that's a huge problem.

You can't be fighting over nationalism on left and right. It can't be the purview of left or right. It needs to be a collective feeling we all believe in. Arlene, what do you think the flag means now? And I ask you, this is a big country and you spend a lot of time crisscrossing this country. What does the flag mean to you? I mean, I'm an immigrant and so I get emotional about it.

I think the flag represents to me the opportunity that this country afforded my family. And so that has not, I don't think about it as left and right, I don't think about it as belonging to anyone. I think the country is, the flag represents all of us and I think it represents everyday Canadians. I think the middle is getting hollowed out

only because of the voices being more vocal on the far left and the far right. And I believe that Canadians are much more middle than we believe them to be and that they do care about social responsibility and they do want fiscal accountability. And I think people can say, well, that's a very, they can ascribe that to whatever party they want. I just think it is who we are. And so when I think about the flag, I think about this loyalty to a nation that is a mosaic, that does allow people to succeed,

that has an opportunity based in it. And so I think the narrative is too much about painting far left and far right. And they are the most vocal people. And so I think about the flag as representing all of us in the everyday Canadian and not sides, but the collective us. And that might sound too Pollyanna to some, but I

actually don't think it is. I think it's actually very true as to who we are and what we represent. Andrew, we're just about out of time. Is this a moment do you think for us to seize on what you say has been missing over the last little while and whether it's create a narrative, recreate a narrative, build a new narrative about the country. Is this an opportunity for Canada to do that?

It's not just an opportunity, it is an absolutely vital opportunity. I mean if Canadians miss this moment we might not get it back. I think this is an extremely opportune time for Canada to you know do some deep soul searching about what kind of country they want, if they even want a country, and how to move forward on that. It's going to require leadership and it's going to also require every single Canadian

to just lean in. ≫ Just very briefly, are you confident that Canadians will do that? Lean in? ≫ I am. Never squander a good crisis. And you know what, I'm very confident.

I think they do want a country. I do think they want to hold onto Canada and they are going to fight hard for it. It's great to talk to you both about this. Thank you very much. Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Arlene. Thanks, Matt.

Andrew Potter is the author of On Decline, Stagnation, Nostalgia, Why Every Year Is the Worst Year Ever. He was in Montreal. Arlene Dickinson, entrepreneur, investor, member of the Federal Government's Advisory Council on Canada- US relations. She was in Toronto.

Your thoughts on this, the moment that seems to be unfolding in terms of Canadian pride, how you feel about your Canadian-ness through this and what will come from this moment. You can email us the current at cbc.ca. We're going to be talking more about this coming up tomorrow on the program. When we broadcast live from Windsor, a city that

has very, very close ties to the United States and to people there. We're going to talk about the relationship between Canada and the U.S. on a very personal level. We're going to bring you the program live from a diner near the Stellantis Auto Plant. That is tomorrow on The Current.