We Are Waiting for Americans to Say No

For more than a year, Canadians have been trying to understand what is happening to the relationship between our country and the United States.

At first, many of us treated Donald Trump’s threats as theatre. When he talked about Canada becoming the 51st state, we assumed he was provoking us. He was being Trump. He liked attention. Surely no American president seriously imagined absorbing Canada into the United States.

We laughed because taking him seriously would have required us to reconsider the entire relationship.

We are not laughing now.

This week, Trump suggested changing the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America.” He first posted the idea in writing. Then he repeated it in a video and reportedly said he was not kidding.

The president of the United States cannot rename Canada’s portion of Lake Ontario. Most of the lake’s surface area is in Canada.

That is almost beside the point.

The point is the performance: the casual erasure of Canadian geography and sovereignty by the man in command of the most powerful military in the world.

A joke releases tension. Repetition establishes a pattern.

Canadians understand that Trump is taunting us during an escalating tariff war. But these taunts are not being exchanged between equals. They are coming from the president of a country with a population nearly nine times our own, an economy deeply entwined with ours and military power we could never hope to match.

It is difficult to explain what this has felt like psychologically.

The closest comparison I can find is a terrible divorce.

We thought we knew our partner. Our finances were linked. We shared a home, responsibilities, history and family. Then suddenly the person across the table began threatening our livelihood and insisting that everything we had built together rightfully belonged to them.

Now we are sitting there thinking: Who are you? Were you always this person? How did we not see it?

And we cannot simply change the locks.

We share custody of a continent.

Our supply chains, energy systems, waterways, ecosystems and economies cross the border every day. Millions of ordinary relationships cross it too. We have families, friendships, businesses and communities built through generations of cooperation.

That is what makes this feel like betrayal rather than ordinary political conflict.

Our jobs and livelihoods are being affected. Canadian industries are being targeted. Workers and businesses are living with uncertainty because the president of our closest neighbour has chosen to use economic pain as leverage. At the same time, he continues to speak about our country as though its independence were negotiable.

Many Americans have entered Canadian groups online to tell us they are sorry.

I believe many of them are sincere. They did not vote for Trump. They are frightened by what is happening in their own country. Some fear losing their employment, healthcare or personal safety. Others worry that greater unrest could give Trump another justification for expanding his authority.

Those fears are real.

But Canadians are also becoming frustrated.

We are being attacked by the government of their country. Sympathy is welcome, but sympathy is not resistance.

There have been large American protests. Millions of people have marched. Democratic politicians, journalists, judges, lawyers and ordinary citizens have pushed back in important ways. It would be unfair to pretend that no one is resisting.

But a march is not the same as sustained refusal.

Where are the general strikes? Where is the coordinated economic shutdown? Where are the institutions collectively saying: No, we will not participate in this?

What has been especially difficult for Canadians to accept is that Americans did not elect Donald Trump without knowing who he was.

This was the second time.

They had seen January 6. They had heard the threats, watched the cruelty and witnessed his contempt for democratic limits. This time he returned with Project 2025, an organized political network and people prepared to turn his impulses into government policy.

Americans also had a viable alternative in Kamala Harris. They did not have to admire her, agree with every Democratic policy or pretend that her campaign was flawless. They only had to compare a qualified, experienced candidate with a man whose conduct and instability had already been displayed before the world.

And still, millions chose Trump again. Others chose not to vote.

That is why it is no longer honest to describe this as the work of one man. One man is leading it, but an entire political structure made it possible.

Trump has also repeatedly entertained the idea of a third term. The American Constitution clearly prohibits a president from being elected more than twice, and Trump has at times acknowledged that restriction. Yet he and his allies continue to discuss another term as though the Constitution were an inconvenience rather than the law governing his office.

The question is not merely whether the Constitution says no.

The question is who will make that no mean something.

Perhaps part of the answer lies in what happens to those who resist.

This week, Major Jason Watson, an active-duty United States Air Force officer, was placed in pretrial confinement after publicly calling for the impeachment of Donald Trump and JD Vance over the war with Iran. He has not been convicted, and he is not charged with treason. He faces military charges for contemptuous speech, disobeying orders and conduct unbecoming an officer.

The legal distinctions matter. Active-duty officers accept strict limitations on political speech, particularly while wearing the uniform.

But the larger moral question matters too.

In an institution built around obedience, who will have the courage to speak when obedience itself becomes dangerous?

Courage is easy to admire after history has decided who was right. It is much harder while history is still unfolding, when speaking can destroy a career, remove someone’s freedom and place their family’s security at risk.

This week, Trump also said that Kim Jong-un had always treated him with “great respect” and that the two men understood one another. At the same time, he continued attacking Mark Carney, the democratically elected prime minister of America’s closest neighbour.

The contrast is difficult to ignore.

A hereditary dictator receives warmth. A democratic leader defending his country receives insults, tariffs and threats.

Perhaps this tells us something about what Trump means by respect. He appears to recognize it most readily when it resembles submission.

Americans have built a powerful national mythology around independence. Their country celebrates revolution, resistance to tyranny and the courage of the individual standing against overwhelming power.

Canadians are now watching to see whether that mythology can become action.

We are standing up to a much larger country because we have no choice. We are changing how we buy, trade and travel. We are seeking new alliances and new markets. We are absorbing economic consequences we did not create, while discovering how dangerous it was to allow so much of our security to depend upon one partner.

We are doing this while still trying to distinguish between the American government and the millions of Americans who oppose it.

But that distinction cannot carry all the weight forever.

Not every American is personally responsible for every action taken by the United States government, just as Canadians would not want to be judged for every action taken by ours.

But resistance cannot end with an apology.

When your government threatens your closest neighbour, dismantles democratic protections and tests how much authority one person can accumulate, disagreement is no longer enough. Eventually, people and institutions must decide what they will refuse to do.

Canadians cannot make that decision for Americans.

We can protect our own country. We can reduce our dependence. We can strengthen our alliances. And we can stop treating threats as jokes simply because acknowledging them is frightening.

Then we can ask the question that increasingly sits beneath every apology offered to us:

We know you are sorry.

But who among you is prepared to say no?