The Decibel - After 250 years of living next to the U.S., what’s next?

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

Canada and the U.S. share more than July birthdays. Between them is the world’s longest international land border, more than $3 billion in trade daily and they’re longtime partners in defence and security. The relationship is now being tested like few times in its history by U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats and tariffs. What do past pivotal moments in Canadian-American relations tell us about what the future holds?  John Ibbitson, senior fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and retired Globe journalist joins The Decibel to talk about important moments between the neighbours – through wars, civil rights and free trade deals – and where the relationship could be headed next.  Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The United States of America is turning 250 years old. And as the country takes time to reflect on where they've been and where they're going, we wanted to take the occasion to look at how our relationship with them has changed over the years. Oh, the influence of the United States on Canada is enormous. It, in many ways, defines our own history. The history of Canada is in many ways a reaction to the history of the United States. Today, John Ibbotson, senior fellow at the Monk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and retired globe journalist is here.

He'll tell us how the two countries became uniquely intertwined, the key moments in history of Canada-U.S. relations that John thinks we can learn from and where we might be headed next. I'm Cheryl Sutherland and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, John. It's so nice to see you. Great to be here. John, you spent a lot of your career with the globe covering U.S.-Canada relations, including at one point serving as the paper's Washington Bureau Chief. How do you view this current moment in that wider history?

The current moment in Canadian-American relations is unlike any other in the past. And that is, of course, for two words, Donald Trump. In his second term, Trump is realigning American interests, American priorities, He appears to be questioning, as he has questioned in the past, the traditional alliances of the United States established after the Second World War, including NATO and including NORAD. And as he does that, as he imposes tariffs and talks about making Canada a 51st state or annexing Greenland or goes to war with Iran, as he does all these things, he fundamentally

changes the way Canada related to the United States, the way Canadians view. the United States. And that change is entirely negative. There is no positive element to that change. So we're going to spend this conversation talking about the past and the history, right? Why do you think it's important for us to look back at the history of our two countries' relations, especially when there's so much to contend with in the present? I don't think you can ever understand any element of the present unless you understand the past. When I used to talk to journalism school students, I would say the only two things that you need to understand our philosophy in history. Because if you're covering a city council debate, you're covering

the philosophy of government and the history of government. And that is especially true of Canada-U.S. relations. If you are to understand where we are today, you have to understand how we got here. That means understanding the evolution of Canada-U.S. relations over the centuries. Okay, so let's give people a history lesson today. And on that note, we can't go through everything that's happened between our two countries. But what do you view as the defining moments in this relationship? Well, it started with the American Revolution when the Americans thought they might be able to annex British North America as part of that revolution, and that failed. The second and even more important event was the decision by the Americans in 1812 to go to war with Great Britain and again

to invade an annex Canada. And English and French Canadians and First Nations together decided to work with the British troops to repel those invasions. That's what I think we decided we are Canadians. We are not Americans and we never want to be Americans. You can then fast forward to Confederation, which was in many ways a reaction to the American Civil War. You had this enormously powerful Northern Army looking around, perhaps looking northward. And the fathers of Confederation agreed that if Canada was to avoid being annexed by the United States, either peaceably or forcibly, then we should confederate ourselves. And that's how we got the Dominion of Canada in the first place. And this goes all the way through to the American and Canadian

decisions to jointly defend North America at the outbreak of the Second World War. Canadian social justice movements in the 1960s were a response to American social justice movements. And again, our decision to stay out of the Iraq war in many ways to find Canada-U.S. relations in the early years of this century. And now, as I said, we have Donald Trump. Okay. That's a huge amount of information history here. Let's get into some of these moments in more detail. Let's start with the War of 1812. Tell me about that. Sure. The Americans were mad at the British. The Napoleonic wars were underway in Europe. There were all sorts of fights going on about maritime shipping. But what really mattered was a lot of

Americans believed that this was a perfect time to invade an annex Canada. One American leader called it a mere matter of marching. And so they marched and they invaded. But they were defeated. They were defeated in what is now Detroit and they were defeated at what is now Niagara. And they were defeated largely because British troops working in close alliance with First Nations troops and assisted by English and French settlers. That occurred in 1812. It more or less repeated itself in 1813 and 14. So that by the end of the war, the Americas that come to the conclusions that they could permanently not expect,

at least for the foreseeable future, to ever acquire British North America for their own. And that, again, I think, was when a lot of people on the northern states, side of the border, said, all right, we've done. We've won that war. We are now our own space and we have to decide what we're going to do in that space, but this is Canada. So we see Canada, or at least what becomes Canada, kind of step up for itself in this moment. Absolutely. As I said, it was the time that the French and the English and the First Nations said, we're not going to be part of the United States, we're going to be part of something else. Now, we have to decide what that something else is, and we haven't figured that out yet. But there's going to be clearly a,

French Canada in what's then called Lower Canada. And there's going to be something English in the rest of the space. And there's going to be as well alliance with or relations with First Nations, who actually were quite dominant, especially during the war of 1812. We would not have won that war had it not been for them. Later in the 1800s, the Civil War starts in the U.S., right? What was it like for Canada to be next door to a civil war? It was frightening, especially at the end, because the North had developed, first of all, a major industrial economy, and second of all, a very large and very powerful army.

And when the war ended, that army was still there. And the question was, what are they going to do with it? Are they just going to disband and go back to a civilian life? Or are they going to use that army in other ways? And if they do use that army in other ways, what might that be? Well, of course, one answer would be, we will invade an annexed Canada. This was a great fear among the leaders of the fathers of confederation. Now, there were Canadians who wanted to be annexed.

There were people in upper and lower Canada who said, great, this is a big chance for us to become part of the United States, part of this great new empire. But most people did not want to become part of the United States. Most people wanted to find an alternative. Sounds like today almost. Yeah, very much like today. Only back then, one alternative was to stay part of the British Empire. That's not an alternative today.

But the final solution adopted by the fathers of confederation, including Johnny McDonald and George Brown, the founder of the globe, was that we would confederate, that the various colonies would ban together, continue to have large levels of self-government, but in areas of joint mutual interest, a dominion government, a federal government, would take on that responsibility. And that's what we became in 1867. Considering how divided the U.S. is today, do you see parallel? to the division in the U.S. around the Civil War? The division that created the Civil War was the division between North and South over the issue of slavery. The divides are different today. There is a northern and southern component to it.

Certainly, the rights of African-Americans continue to be debated within the context of these divisions. But now it's also a question of immigration. With many in the mega movement, as it's called, wanting to throw up real or metaphorical borders to limit the intake of immigration. to the United States, especially from Latin America.

So that's the big difference between now and then. Yeah, okay. I'm always trying to find parallels as to what we can learn from the past and, like, you know, what it says about us right now. So let's move on in our history lesson. There's a shift in how Canada is viewed by the U.S. So they are seen as a more respected partner. And this involves another war.

Can you explain how that happens? Yes. So in 1939, Canada went to war, with Great Britain and France against Germany. In 1940, France fell, and Britain was under extreme attack. And there was a question as to whether Britain would fall. And there was a question as to whether the Germans or possibly the Japanese might, in fact, attack North America. And so Mackenzie King and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the president, they met and they decided

that they would create a kind of continental agreement, that the attack on one of their countries would be an attack on both the countries. In essence, what that meant was if anybody, the Germans or the Japanese or anyone else, decided to attack Canada, the United States would consider that an attack on the United States. And that was the true beginning of continental defense and the continental agreement between Canada and the U.S. So that's what leads to NATO and NORAD. Exactly so. Eventually, the United States entered the war against both Germany and Japan. The allies were victorious. But following the war, there is a new threat. The threat of the of the Soviet Union of Russia, and the United States and Canada and the nations of Western Europe

decided that they should band together defensively to produce this sort of hemispheric defense known as NATO. And then in the 1950s, Canada and the United States agreed that they should also create a hemispheric air defense, and that became NORAD. How unique was this kind of agreement to essentially enmesh two countries' militaries? It is practically unique. In fact, I can't think of anywhere in the world where two countries, like Canada and the United States have worked as closely and as cooperatively as these two countries have in the notion of continental defense. I think in many ways, both economically and culturally and in terms of collective security, the relationship between Canada and the United States is unique.

We'll be right back. Okay, so we left off talking about how our militaries became somewhat integrated. That also becomes true with the rest of our culture. Can you tell me about that? Well, sure. They mean Canada and the United States are in the United States are in the United States. some ways very similar if we're talking about English Canada, of course. French Canada, different language, different culture. French Canada is a nation within the United Canada. But English Canada and the United States are so similar that many people can't tell the Canadians and Americans apart when they're traveling, which is why we put a flag in our backpack, some of us, when we're overseas to let Europeans know that they're talking to a Canuck, not to a Yank.

But culturally, in terms of literature, in terms of film, in terms of television, Canada and the United States are very similar creatures, our culture. are very closely linked. When did that change? Is there a particular moment in history where we kind of started seeing this kind of cultural kind of enmeshing happening? Oh, it goes way back.

Even in the 19th century, the Americans and the Canadians were noticing how much they were going back and forth just in terms of population flow, but also in terms of culture and in terms of trade. There were strong similarities between New England and the Maritimes.

And certainly, Ontario and New York and Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania and Michigan were also very similar communities. So I think it's pretty much as long as Canada has been around as Canada, it has been trading with and being influenced by the culture and the economy of the United States. That's really interesting. And then like, you know, maybe more recently as well, we started to see that really kind of come together around the civil rights movement, right?

And anti-war movements that were kind of echoed in Canada. Yeah, the United States was having a profound internal debate over Jim, crow, the fact that African-Americans had not obtained any of the true freedoms that they were supposed to have achieved in the wake of the Civil War. And so there was a great debate over the role of African-Americans within American society, the rights of African-Americans in the South versus what was happening in the North. There was also a tremendous opposition growing among younger Americans towards the Vietnam War that was ongoing. And this led to riots, to cities in flames, to huge debates and elections.

fought on these issues. Canada, of course, did not have these issues. We can certainly talk about the difficulties that black Canadians have had that First Nations and other indigenous Canadians have had, but there was nothing like the equivalent of Jim Crow in the South in the 1960s. And Canada was not part of the Vietnam War. Nonetheless, if they're going to have a civil rights movement, then we're going to have a civil rights movement too. And so, yes, young people occupied some universities and there were demonstrations and protests and people singing songs and smoking pot and hanging out in Yorkville, which, believe it or not, was a bit of hippie haven back in the 60s in Toronto. But again, it was in many ways as it so often is a pale reflection of what

was going on south of the border. Let's dig into trade because, of course, we talk a lot about trade because of what's going on today. But can you take us back to how free trade between the U.S. and Canada started? Yeah, so you have to go back a long way. You have to go back to the 19th century. There was a great fear among Canadian businesses that, again, we would just be overwhelmed by the United States. And so John A. MacDonald established what was called the national policy, which essentially

was a set of tariffs that made it uneconomic for Americans to trade into Canada so that Canadian companies could substitute for those products. What it meant, in fact, very much was the creation of American branch plants. all across Canada in order to jump that tariff barrier. But starting in the 1960s, Canada and the United States decided that these barriers should be reduced. First in the auto sector, and then in the 1980s, there was a movement in Canada to say, well, let's actually see about having a complete free trade with the United States. We're moving essentially Johnny McDonald's national policy once and for all at having an open border

with the free flow of goods and services across that border. And that's what they negotiated. many exceptions in areas such as dairy and finance. But for the most part, by the end of the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement, Canada, the United States and Mexico, were all trading freely with each other and produced a boom in the economies of all three countries. I would maintain it was a huge benefit for Canada and for the United States and for Mexico. And it lasted pretty much from the 1990s until Donald Trump became president in 2017. I think it's worth going back.

to this election in 1988, where free trade was the main election issue, right? What were the arguments for and against intertwining our trade with the U.S.? Because there were foreign against arguments, right? Yeah, in fact, I don't think of any other issue in my lifetime in which an election has been dominated by that single issue. The 88 election was an election about free trade with Brian Marooning's conservatives, having negotiated a free trade agreement with the United States, and with, John Turner's liberals adamantly opposed to that free trade agreement. Had the liberals won that

election, they would not have ratified the free trade agreement with the United States, and we would have gotten something else. But the conservatives who had argued for free trade for years had negotiated the free trade agreement, and they won that election. But it was an election over, can you have a free trade agreement that does not compromise the sovereignty of the country? I think in the end, history has proved, yes, you can. The free trade agreement that Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan signed, did not compromise Canadian sovereignty, but did expand economic growth in both countries. But at the time, it was a huge debate.

There was an ad that the liberals had that showed an American simply erasing the Canadian border with an eraser. Since we're talking about this free trade agreement, there's one line I'd like to change. Which line is that? Well, this one here. It's just getting in the way. Just how much are we giving away in the Moruni free trade deal? Our water, our health care, our culture, the line has been drawn.

Which side do you stand on? And people, they fought hard. There were bitter disagreements between friends and families, even, over whether we should go with free trade. In the end, we did. And I think in the end, the idea was right. But at the time, it was a very bitter dispute. So, John, the last moment in our shared history that you mentioned was the rift between our countries after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Tell me about that.

Yes, so Canadians were in total solidarity with the Americans after the terrible attacks of 9-11, and we were in solidarity with them as they moved to remove the Taliban from Afghanistan. But when George W. Bush decided as well that Iraq should be invaded and Saddam Hussein should be toppled, John Critchin said, no, there's no case for it. We don't believe in these chemical weapons that the Americans claim Saddam Hussein is making. We haven't seen any evidence to support it. And unless and until you get United Nations resolution, affirming the decision to invade, we're going to step aside. And it caused tensions. There was no

question that the Canada-U.S. relationship was impaired by Canada's decision not to invade or to participate with the United States in invading Iraq, although I think at the time most Canadians supported Jean-Crentian's decision. And as the years went on and the Iraq war turned into a Craigmeyer, Canadians were immensely relieved that Jean-Cretchen had made that decision. In a past column for the globe, you wrote that while Canada and the U.S. shouldn't break up, they do need a trial separation. I'm wondering, how has this protectionist turn in the Trump administration change the way you view the Canada-U.S. relationship? And how do you think it should move forward? For me, this is fundamental. And for me, to be honest, this is personal.

I spent many years working to promote the integration of Canadian economy, Canadian culture with the United States. I spent two stints in Washington for the Globe and Mail. And much of that was about how Canada under Stephen Harper and the United States under Barack Obama should be forming even closer relationships. But the U.S. Donald Trump changed that, and especially in this second term, with his talk of annexation, with these tariffs that are causing huge damage. I'm saying, in fact, quite the opposite now. There are more differences between this version of Canada and the current version of the United States than I've ever seen in my life to the extent that we're not drinking American wines. We're not crossing the American border. I will not cross into the American border.

And it saddens me because it is in many ways the repudiation of a life's work. but it is the reality that we have come to, and it is a reality imposed upon the Canada-U.S. relationship, an enormously destructive reality imposed upon the Canada-U.S. relationship by Donald Trump. So what does that mean, John? Because you've outlined a relationship that while strained was also marked by close cooperation, but now that's changed.

Do you think we could ever get back to the relationship we had, or has it permanently changed regardless of who comes into? office next? Yeah, I mean, there will be a new relationship, regardless of who comes into office next, but that relationship will not be the relationship that was. And Canada has to change the way it sees the United States, and it has to change the way it sees the world. And that's exactly what we're doing. I think most people understand and support the idea that Mark Carney is promoting, that the middle powers have to band together in the absence of any kind of hegemonic support in the United States. and that Canada can play a unique role in this, that Canada can work cooperatively with the European Union.

We have trade ties, we have defense ties, but we also have close ties to the Trans-Pacific Partnership with the countries in the Pacific. And you could see a world in which Canada helps to broker some kind of Atlantic Pacific agreement that would stretch all the way from Poland to Australia, known to the Baltic states to Australia, for that matter, and that would preserve some form of the West without U.S. And that then one day the United States might decide that it wants to become a part of as well. And we would recreate backwards, as it were, the relationship that we had up until Donald Trump became president. I see that as a possible future for Canada, an economic future, one of diversified trade, a collective security future,

one of Atlantic Pacific cooperation with Canada acting something like a hinge. It also brings up the question of collective security. And we see Canada responding to that question with unprecedented increases in defense spending. We are now up to the 2% of GDP that we're supposed to be at NATO. And we're on our way towards 3.5%. There are going to be submarines purchased. There are going to be jet aircraft purchased. There are going to be Coast Guard cutters.

And we're going to have a larger army as well. So this, again, is a transformation of Canada's role on the continent and in the world. It is certainly something that is very, very different from our past. John, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much. It's my pleasure. That was John Ibbotson, a senior fellow at the Monk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and a former staff writer for the globe. He's also working on a new book about Canada during the First World War.

It's called Crucible and is due to be published in 2028. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. This episode was produced by Ali Graham and David Crosby. Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Levy McLaughlin and Mahal Stein. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.