The Decibel - ‘Buy Canadian’ and the week Canadians got mad at the U.S.

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

The U.S. tariff threats against Canada may be on pause, but the reaction from many Canadians shows that the cross-border chaos struck a nerve. From an immediate pledge to boycott and ‘buy Canadian��, to political figures threatening to pull U.S. products from shelves, Canadians across the political spectrum decided to assert themselves against the might of the elephant south of the border.Shannon Proudfoot, feature writer and columnist for The Globe, explores our collective Canadian identity and what the fallout from this week says about the nation’s psyche when we’re threatened by our closest ally.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

Just the other night I was reading a book to my four-year-old that I can't help thinking illustrates the situation. It's the book Horton Hears a Who. Shannon Proudfoot is a feature writer and columnist at The Globe. And this book got her thinking about what was happening this week between Canada and the U.S. It's about an elephant who finds a little speck of dust and he hears a little voice on the speck and he decides to carry around this speck on a clover to protect it because he figures there must be a little person on this speck of dust. And eventually he realizes that in fact there's a whole civilization on this speck of dust and it's the Hoos in Whoville and they have tiny little buildings and tiny little cars

but their lives are just as real as yours. Eventually, some monkeys, called the Wickersham Brothers, try to take the speck of dust and the who's on the dust and boil them, just to be mean. What ends up saving the who's is Horton tells them all to yell in unison until the mean monkeys who want to boil them in Bezel nut oil can hear their voices. Eventually all of their collective voices become loud enough that the Wickersham brothers hear them and think, oh my goodness there is a real society here on this speck of dust. We will respect them. I think Canada was Whoville this week and I think it was really good for us. Today on the show, Shannon explores the collective reaction from Canadians in the face of potential

tariffs from US President Donald Trump and the sense of power that it's given us. I'm Maenaka Ramen-Wilms and this is The Decibel from the Globe and Mail. Shannon, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. So Shannon, let's start by talking about some ideas that we have around being Canadian. So how do you think we see ourselves, Canadians thinking about Canadians? Well, Canadian identity or Canadian self-identity is sort of this notoriously hard to define thing, right? In some ways, we define ourselves as not Americans, which, you know, I think there's something to that.

I think sometimes that gets us stuck in a bit of a smug place where we maybe don't examine what's not so great up here because we just think, well, we're not as bad as the meth lab downstairs like Robin Williams once described it. So there's that. We define ourselves in opposition to what we are not. I think there is a more sort of harder-edged version of questioning whether Canadian identity exists in people who will say, you know, because we are such a multicultural society because we are a country that tends to welcome people and traditions from all over, some people will say that waters down a sense of Canadian-ness. I think there's

also a pretty good argument to be made that that is Canadian-ness, but there is still an ephemeral quality to that. We also, again, ironically, one of the ways we define ourselves in opposition to Americans is that we're not as chest-thumping, right? So I think there is a Canadian-ness, and I have my own ideas about what it is, which is maybe just my way of being Canadian,

but it is sort of this very vague fraught thing. And I think that's also partly because, you know, we're what's often called a middle power, which means we're a smaller guy on the world stage. We don't have a ton of people. We don't have a massive economy. We don't have huge clout. We live right next door to the cloudiest country on earth, which I think has a way also of shrinking us. So I really

think there's something to this idea that we know who we are as Canadians but we constantly question whether we know who we are as Canadians and what that means. Interesting. Okay so let's I guess take it externally then so how other people see us and in particular I guess I wonder about US President Donald Trump. How do you think the current president views Canada? LESLIE KENDRICK I think he sees us as a piggy bank or a nerd on the playground that he can flip upside down and shake to get out of it something that is useful to him. I mean, there's been so many levels, right, to these tariff threats.

There has been the stated reasons initially, which was supposedly about fentanyl and illegal migrants pouring across the border. And we know that factually that is not a thing that is just not a factor of any consequence from Canada across the northern border of the US. Yeah the amount of fentanyl and the amount of people coming across is just minuscule compared to anything from the southern border. It's minuscule so then you go okay well so that was a pretext for him to want to say why he would do this.

The tariff threats clearly are a negotiating tactic for him. I subjected myself to reading The Art of the Deal a couple of weeks ago for a column. That is of course Donald Trump's book. Yes. Donald Trump's book, which he didn't really write, but it was written about him from someone who observed him and then ghost wrote it for him. But one of the most telling lines in the book that still rings very, very true to me, and this might sound familiar to all Canadians, is that he starts his negotiations from a sky-high position

asking for the Sun, Moon and Stars because he figures that sort of sets the floor and then you have to negotiate down from there. So he might end up with less than what he asked for, but he's sure gonna end up with a lot because especially with a power imbalance and a size and a clout and an economy imbalance like there is between Canada and the US here, if he starts from a position of, okay, ruinous 25% tariffs across the board, how do you like them, apples? Then we have to work backwards from that being his starting point. And his thinking is that we have to then make a series of concessions just to avoid that punishment. But I think what's really germane here to thinking about how Canadians reacted to this in sort of

collective way is when he started talking about Justin Trudeau as the governor of Canada, which was going to be a 51st state. And this was a thing he said over and over and over, right? As recently as this week, he talked about sort of like as though we were not a real entity. We were not a sovereign country with borders and a government and a people and that we could just be this thing that he would just sort of, you know, reach across the border and just take. And I think baked into that idea, I mean, it's enormously disrespectful. It's goofy. It's ridiculous, right? This is not a thing we do. But baked into that is the idea that Canada is not consequential enough that anyone else

would care, that the rest of the world would speak up. And also that we ourselves would not fight back, that we would somehow either be willing or happy to be absorbed or just too weak need to do anything about it. So it was this incredibly belittling way of looking at us, even if it was blatantly a troll move. I mean, clearly this is the move of a master internet troll who now lives in the White House. But I still think there was something to the tone of it and what it said about how he thought of us. Well, you touched a little bit on how we responded to that, which I think is a really fascinating thing to look at here, Shannon, because Canadians had a really intense reaction to this. Last week we saw booing at sporting events.

People on social media were telling each other to buy Canadian. There was this kind of movement to buy Canadian goods instead of American ones. You can just support Canadian-made any product, whether it's clothing or not, anything at all. It can go a long way. Starting off with apples, where you can see nice and clear, product of Canada. We are successful. We bought no U.S. products.

I am shopping anything but USA. Were you surprised by that kind of reaction, Shannon? I wasn't. No, because I think, again, if we're thinking about the way people view Canadians from the outside the stereotype of us is that we're so polite and friendly, right? That we're just kind of like, hey, thanks for thanks for having us here. And I don't think that's who we are at all. I think if anything that politeness and friendliness is in my estimation more about repression. It's more about the way we think we need to be in the world and conduct ourselves. That's not the same thing as what's

inside you. Like, again, I love drawing like human parallels, but I think of like, you know, the button-down waspy housewife who is silently furious about things, but still slapping on a smile to put dinner on the table. Like, to me, that's a little bit the way I would think of Canadians. Maybe because I'm from Northern Ontario too, we are a very feisty people. And so there is this politeness and friendliness and sort of easygoing blandness on the surface. But I think it's a massive misunderstanding of who Canadians are to assume that that surface goes all the way down. And so I felt in the reaction from Canada to these tariff threats, there was a great deal of anxiety because again the result

of this would be and still could be really really really bad. So there was a lot of worry about what this could mean and kind of a quiet tense watching and waiting to see what would happen. I kept feeling like a sitting duck. I felt like we didn't have much control to get out from under this because the reason for it was irrational, but boy were we going to have to live with the pain of it. And then it was like, it reached a certain point of seriousness as we ticked down to the 1st of February, there was like the Saturday when Trump finally like passed his final verdict that it was happening. And then there was the Tuesday, which was the

deadline for them to actually enact it. And I feel like Canadians just got pushed over a cliff of rage. And then you saw like the anxiety kind of, it didn't so much give way as it transformed into this kind of collective like fury and pushback. And in some cases it was a very cheerful, cheeky rebellion. In other cases, it was a very kind of, like as you said, people wanting to buy Canadian and feel like they could do something about a situation that in a big picture way, each of us individually kind of can't do much about, right? Yeah. Well, let's dig into this a little bit more because I think it's important to kind

of get to the root of this. I think the reaction itself is understandable, but I think some people were surprised by how public and how widespread it really was across Canada. So I guess what is it about these tariffs and this whole situation that sparked such a strong reaction? I think it's the feeling of sort of powerlessness, but then a rejection of that powerlessness because there is the size imbalance and also there's the irrationality of Trump, right? He wants the things he wants because he wants them and he doesn't appear to care if it would be hugely damaging to his country too. So you had, say, federal government figures out making a very rational public argument, trying to sort of Trump whisper

in public and say, you know, this is going to be really bad for your people too. And the price of groceries and people's anxieties and frustrations about how to afford their lives. Donald Trump, that's what got you into office and this is going to be very, very bad for that. So they were trying to make a rational argument, which makes perfect sense from a government point of view, but this was not a rational decision. So it feels to me like Canadians themselves, we were going to have to live with some really quite dire consequences of this. And I think of it like that way when you can't control something really big in your life, you seize control of what it is you can control, even if it's smaller scale. And so for Canadians who were say going to the grocery store and wanting

to seek out Canadian products or Canadian stores, I looked at a Facebook group that I think had something like 70 or 80,000 members a couple of weeks ago by Canadian. They now have almost 800,000. Like their admins literally can't keep up with approving new members and approving posts because I think this is the one thing people can do. Like it's the one thing that's in your shopping cart, in your wallet, in your home.

And maybe it's a gesture, maybe it's symbolic. I don't think it feels that way. I think it feels practical and like a doable thing for people, but it's like a place to put your emotions and a place to feel like you are not that sitting duck feeling that I kind of referenced. So what is the feeling I guess that's wrapped up in this? Like in a way it's kind of, you know,

we're rallying around being Canadian, this idea of rallying around the flag. Maybe like is this patriotism? What is it? I have kind of a weird reaction to the word patriotism Just because I think it often gets freighted with other things where it's a way to sort of paper over things and say like are You patriotic or are you not I think of it more as solidarity, but I think the feeling is a reaction to I think of it more as solidarity, but I think the feeling is a reaction to Donald Trump's idea that we are not a real country, that we are this toy thing on the map that he could just take if he wanted, or at the very least that he could punish us quite badly on an economic level. And so it's that feeling of rebelling against the idea that we don't matter, that we're

not big enough or real enough to fight back. Manitoba Premier, Bob Canoe gave a really interesting press conference on, I think it was Saturday, where he talked about similar measures to what we saw in other provinces, which I think, again, as a Canadian, it felt really emotionally satisfying to me when I saw pictures on social media of provincial liquor stores pulling all the US booze off the shelves and putting signs in their place that said buy Canadian. I understand that that is a rational economic reaction that is meant to inflict economic

pain to show US states how important their trade relationship is. There's a practical reason to do that. It's also super emotionally satisfying. And so the reporters kept asking Wab Kanu about these measures. So he was announcing that Manitoba was doing the same thing, pulling all the US booze off the shelves. And, you know, he expected this to have a sizable economic impact the same way Ontario did BC, lots of provinces.

But as people kept asking him questions, what he ended up saying was that he thought it was important for us to do this stuff, just to do it. And we have been trying to solve this over a warm and hearty handshake. But now that the fight is here, we are sticking up for ourselves and we are pushing back. And so it becomes important to draw a line in the sand, just to draw it, just to say, we're a real country and we have spines and you've made us mad and now watch us go. We'll be right back. Okay, so Shannon, we talked about solidarity kind of across Canada.

We also saw this kind of solidarity happening on the political level as well. Even Alberta Premier, Daniel Smith came out and said that she would work with the federal government and her fellow premiers. This was in a post on Exxon Saturday. So what do you make of this political cooperation here? It's been interesting because it's much more fraught. There's a lot of different things kind of moving in different directions there. So for Pierre Polyaev, you've seen this really

obvious kind of careful calibration or recalibration in his message because he has spent the last couple of years very effectively talking about how Canada is broken and every last bit of it is Justin Trudeau's fault. And you can see how that would be a difficult message for him to continue with when we're having a rally around the flag moment. So he has kind of carefully recalibrated. I think the last time he did a press conference a few days ago, the statement, like he always has sort of a banner on the front of his podium that's in all the shots. And instead of it saying something like Canada

is broken, it just said Canada. So that's a very visual representation of he's been walking a fine line to try to talk about critiquing the federal government and position what he would do differently because we could be in a federal election in less than two months without sounding disloyal or too hard-edged for a moment where people have an appetite for more cooperation. And then at the same time you have a liberal leadership race going on actively to replace the Prime Minister and there the ballot box question for them and then for the general election that's coming has 100% become who is better equipped to deal

with Donald Trump and to help us withstand whatever is coming and deal with it most effectively. So you have Christa Freeland and Mark Carney duking it out to sort of put their bona fides in the window as to which one of them would be better to deal with that. At the provincial level, it's been a little bit more, I don't know, interesting or multifactorial, I guess. Doug Ford in Ontario, who now very conveniently and maybe not coincidentally is in an election campaign, has really gone hard at positioning himself as Captain Canada, right?

He showed up for a first minister's meeting a couple weeks ago with a ball cap that said Canada is not for sale. He's really been out front with the kind of folksy thing he brings, trying to really sound like he is really going to bat for Ontario as the most populous and richest province on behalf of Canada. So he pulled all the booze from the provincial liquor stores, threatened to cancel a hundred million dollar Starlink contract with one of Elon Musk's companies. And so he's really been pulling, and I would argue profiting in his own sort of domestic provincial political sphere from being Captain Canada.

And we should say, of course, he's the leader of the Council of Federations, a group of in his own sort of domestic provincial political sphere from being Captain Canada. And we should say, of course, he's the leader of the Council of Federations, a group of premiers right now. So he gets a little bit more attention as a result of that as well. He does, for sure. So there's a role there that gets him more attention.

I also think he's played it in a pretty crafty way. It has been much more fractious with Danielle Smith out west, who's the premier of Alberta, where one of the sort of sticks or carrots, I guess, depending on how you look at it, that Canada could have leveraged in a trade war could still would be oil and gas because the US really, really wants our oil and gas. And I think she's speaking on two levels in her outside voice. She says, you can't expect one province to bear a higher pain point for fighting a battle on behalf

of the whole country. You know, this isn't fair, blah, blah, blah. But in reality, her political positioning is always about opposition to Ottawa and always about sort of hiving off her province and really pushing back. So she has pretty a streper asleep in a non-team player. Although, as you point out, even this week, she was kind of moderating that message and trying to sound a little bit like she was getting onside, which I think is very telling to the extent that if we think politicians are weather veins who can kind of read which way the wind is blowing with the public, if she's moderating a bit that really tells you where the appetite is

on the part of Canadians to see everyone pulling together, kind of linking arms and presenting a united front for all of us. Well this is interesting because it brings us to the point of kind of politics at the, you know, individual Canadians level, because I think about all of this is happening after a time where Canadians have politically been pretty divided in the last little while. I'm just thinking about the pandemic and the protests in Ottawa that followed that. I guess given that context, Shannon, like, are you surprised that this is what it took to rekindle this kind of, you know, in a way, national unity? I'm not exactly surprised. But what I mean by that

is I think we needed this. I feel like I don't know, I hope that's not too Pollyanna or earnest, but things have been very fractious. As you say, back to the pandemic, back to the trucker convoy in Ottawa, there was this real feeling of which team did you line up on. And Canadian politics sort of infamously until relatively recently has not been super tribal. That's one of the biggest ways in which we've defined ourselves in opposition to the US, right? We had more of a brokerage style of politics. That has been lessening and lessening and it's been getting more tribal over the last say decade or so, but particularly in the last couple of years.

It's been that the temperature has really been turned up on politics at the federal level. And so there has been a real divisiveness and a real sense of like, you're either wearing the same color jersey as I am, or you're not. And then if you're not, like, we got to go. And so I feel like we sort of needed a moment to come together to have some solidarity, some sense of collectivity. I also think that's a very natural kind of baked in human reaction to threats from the outside or a situation where things are very bad in a way that exists like way up above your head. You can't fix the badness. You can't really do anything about it. Even I would argue if you're like the prime minister or premier, you can't do much about

it because this is about the capriciousness of Donald Trump. So in that case, if there are storm clouds gathering and they're headed your way, all that is left for you to do is to gather with your neighbors and try to like hunker down and survive it together. Again, I don't want to suggest this has been a bomb on the soul of Canada and we're all friends again. I'm sure we'll go back to fighting about something else next week if this all kind of dissipates. But I feel like this kind of moment of solidarity was both psychologically satisfying and maybe

needed and is also kind of the only reaction you can have to a massive, exogenous threat, if I'm going to be a bit of a dork about it. You mentioned, you know, it's not necessarily long lasting. Do you have a sense, I guess, like how long do you think this feeling of solidarity will actually last us? My inclination is to think it will renew itself in, what are we, like 27 days out from the next time these tariffs come up? I don't know. I mean, my own cynical reaction is I feel like Donald Trump climbed down on the tariffs temporarily because the stock market drove itself off a cliff on Monday as it predictably was going to do with these threats.

So he is a fundamentally self-interested animal. So in that case, what we promised was just a way for him to save face and say he got a win. That to me is the material question as to whether we're back here again 30 days after the day they were paused or whether he kind of just quietly goes off into the night, I would bet not because he likes to negotiate from a position of strength, he likes wins for a win sake. And this is a pretty great kind of context in which if that is the way

you're wired and he is to extract wins from smaller parties who are very, very intertwined with your economy. He can keep leaning on us. He can keep pushing on us and keep extracting wins, even if they're kind of weird, Pyrrhic victories. Like one of the kind of fun, cheeky reactions I saw this week was a meme going around and it was sort of a split photo where the top half was Justin Trudeau on the phone and the bottom was a photo of Mexican President Claudia Schoenbaum also on the phone. And Trudeau had a speech bubble above his head that said, so I offered him a bunch of stuff we were already doing and he went for it and paused the tariffs and her speech bubble said, OMG, same. So this is very cheeky, smart alecky,

kind of little guy subversive humor that I associate with being very Canadian. It feels very kids in the hall. It feels like like a little guy punching up and having a good time with his friends kind of pushing back. And so I think of that as a very quintessentially Canadian response. But also we're probably going to need that kind of spirit because Trump is a man who likes a wind for a winsake and he likes to just extract from people. He divides the world into winners and losers. He divides every negotiation into winners and losers. And he clearly sees sort of a vulnerable mark here in Canada and Mexico because of the way

our economies are so tightly intertwined with the US and how huge the US is. So my guess would be that however well this spirit of kind of solidarity has served us, we might be right back here in 25 days when the next round comes around and when he kind of comes knocking for more concessions. Shannon, it's been so fascinating talking to you. Thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me. It's been fun. That's it for today. I'm Maynika Ramen-Wilms. Our producers are Madeleine White, Michal Stein, and Allie Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. You can subscribe to The Globe and Mail at globeandmail.com slash subscribe.

Thanks so much for listening.