When Bill Clinton arrived in Mont-Tremblant, Canada, in October 1999 for a governance conference, the United States’ northern neighbor was still reeling from attempts by its largest province, Quebec, to secede and form its own country.
In his keynote speech, the then-president challenged audience members to consider the purpose and consequences of independence within a federal system like Canada’s.
“Is there a way people can get along if they come from different heritages? Are minority rights, as well as majority rights, respected?”
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Relations between Ottawa and Washington have hit the skids during President Trump’s second term. But that is presenting Canada an opportunity to rebuild its influence on the world stage, independently of its southern neighbor.
The speech, made at the request of then Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and interpreted as a clear American stance against Quebec separatism, was a “tour de force,” recalls Gordon Giffin, who was the U.S. ambassador to Canada at the time.
It was also an illustration of “the core of the special relationship” between Canada and the U.S., one that was not just economic or geographical, but also geopolitical, cultural, even spiritual. “An American president,” Mr. Giffin muses today, “went to Canada to argue for Canadian sovereignty.”
A generation later, the current Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, finds himself in very different circumstances.
As host of the meeting of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations that officially opens Monday morning, he is in a position of global leadership over the biggest issues of the day. Overshadowing the three-day summit will be debate over how the world should react to the war that broke out Friday between Israel and Iran.
But where Mr. Chrétien could rely on Mr. Clinton, Canada today no longer regards Washington as a trustworthy partner in international affairs. The annual meeting of world powers is a stage for Mr. Carney to chart a new path with like-minded allies, independent of the United States.
The prime minister, under threat from Mr. Trump’s trade war and calls for annexation, had already declared “the old relationship” with the U.S. “over.” Even if the G7 summit offers a thaw in the relationship, Mr. Carney began to shape that independence ahead of the summit, announcing massive increases in defense spending and new legislation to fast-track megaprojects in the national interest.
“An opportunity for renewal”?
But this isn’t a sudden rupture, argues Mr. Giffin. For as offensive as Mr. Trump has been to its northern neighbor, threatening to make Canada a 51st state at his will, the relationship has been deteriorating for some time – perhaps since Mr. Clinton’s speech.
Mr. Carney’s Liberals readily won April 28 federal elections on a message to deepen ties with like-minded allies. The prime minister, who first stepped into office after Justin Trudeau resigned this winter, chose to visit France, the United Kingdom, and the Arctic on his first trip as head-of-state, a nod to Canada’s distinct heritage.
When it came time to open a new session of parliament last month, Canada asked King Charles III to deliver the throne speech, the first time a monarch has done so since 1977. (The speech is usually given by the governor general, the federal representative of the monarch in Canada.) The king spoke to Canadians about “an opportunity for renewal. An opportunity to think big and to act bigger” amid unprecedented challenges.
Mr. Carney, a former executive who has tried to bypass politics, announced ambitious plans to remove by July stubborn interprovincial trade barriers that have vexed his predecessors. His government introduced the Building Canada Act to fast-track projects that shore up Canadian security and autonomy.
Last week, Mr. Carney announced a cash increase of over $9 billion (Canadian; U.S.$6.6 billion) in military spending, promising to meet a NATO target in defense spending for members matching 2% of GDP by March 2026, moving up Canada’s goals by five years. “The long-held view that Canada’s geographic location will protect us is becoming increasingly archaic,” Mr. Carney said. “Threats which felt far away and remote are now immediate and acute.”
It’s the kind of rhetoric that hasn’t been heard in Canada in a generation. At that point, while Ambassador Giffin saw in Canada a true geopolitical partner, Lloyd Axworthy, who was Canada’s foreign minister in the ‘90s, says he also saw a much stronger Canada on the foreign stage.
Serving under Mr. Chrétien, Mr. Axworthy says Canada’s relationship with the U.S. was cordial and cooperative. But Canada also took clear, independent stances from the U.S. Mr. Axworthy visited Fidel Castro in Cuba in 1997. Canada was key to establishing the International Criminal Court and the international landmines treaty, neither of which Washington signed on to. Later, in 2003, Canada refused to join the “coalition of the willing” in Iraq after 9/11.
“We’re not doing that these days,” says Mr. Axworthy. Instead, Canada has shrunk from the foreign stage, while its relationship with the U.S. has increasingly become a mercantile one, based on the free trade deals that have defined the modern relationship. “We’re not sure how to adapt, because for so long it’s been so easy,” he says.
“A really significant realignment”
The upending of relations wrought by Mr. Trump is seen as the clear pivot point in Canada. But Alasdair Roberts, a professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of “The Adaptable Country: How Canada Can Survive the Twenty-First Century,” argues this rupture was going to happen anyway. He argues Canada should be gathering its domestic leaders in annual summits like the G7 does internationally to set national priorities.
“American politics was clearly becoming more unstable,” he says. “It’s becoming a more complicated and dangerous world. So Canada was going to be put into this sort of position one way or another.”
It’s not going to be easy to untangle from the U.S. Three-quarters of Canadian exports head to the U.S. Like many NATO allies, Canada has depended on U.S. military defense, and Canada’s in particular is deeply intertwined with that of its neighbor.
But Mr. Carney’s efforts to build stronger alliances will be on display in Kanakasis. “I think the world where Canada and the U.S. were partners in so many ways, where we were really depending on the U.S., that’s done,” says Lori Turnbull, a professor in political science at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. “I think Carney is absolutely going to create transformative partnerships with the EU, U.K. … This is going to be a really significant realignment.”
Ambassador Giffin argues that the U.S. has a place in that future. He says Mr. Carney is right to position Canada where the U.S. can’t unilaterally disrupt the economy or political system. But Canada can eventually look to recreate what he saw with Mr. Clinton on that stage in Quebec.
“We need to renew the dynamic that made it a partnership, and a partnership to me connotes co-equals in a dialogue,” he says. “It’s too easy to say, ‘We gotta separate ourselves from the Americans, they’ve offended us.’ … History would tell me there’s a better way to do this.”
