A few months ago, CBC radio’s flagship national program called Cross-country Checkup asked Canadians a question that riled us immensely. I’m posting in September of 2025, a letter I wrote to Ian Hanomansing back then. Barely nine months, one election, one by-election a G7 summit, and multiple White House performance art shlocks later, amid a worsened geopolitical situation in which Trump has proved himself simultaneously impotent (at deals, peacemaking) yet virulent (to liberal human rights), and some of my concerns seem now to be already normalized, subsumed under the tsunami of Trumplandia authoritarianism.

In only nine months, we have fewer made-in-USA goods on our grocery store shelves, and more products Made in Canada or imported from Mexico, South Africa, or elsewhere -anywhere but USA. We have Canadians eschewing travel to, or even through, the USA. We have legislators rushing to remove barriers to intra provincial trade. We have a macro economics expert as the Prime Minister and we have started to talk about diversifying our economic partners away from the USA.

But we also have a Prime Minister who, despite calling himself a Liberal and plying us with hockey metaphors and Dad jokes, is acting like a conservative, gainsaying important progress our nation was beginning to make in terms of the TRC Calls to Action, Indigenous reconciliation, pivoting our natural resource-based economy away from petroculture and towards a more environmentally responsible system, and ensuring gender-based equity and labour rights. Further, we have started to think about ourselves as a war hawk nation as opposed to a peacekeeper nation.

I certainly did not see those threats coming when I responded to Cross-country Checkup’s query about Trump’s attacks on our sovereignty.

Here’s the letter:

Feb 24’25

To: checkup@cbc.ca, ian.hanomansing@cbc.ca

My name is Heather, I live in Edmonton. I work in higher education, supporting research. Before that I managed international development projects, some of which were using USAID or PEPFAR funding. And before that I was a professor at a university in the United States. I say this to give context and to show that I am fairly well informed on our neighbours to the south.

What do I think of Trump’s comments about Canada becoming the 51st state?

I think it’s a damn good thing Cross-Country Check up modified the question from what you originally proposed!!  Because your original concept was an absolute normalization of the idea of the USA invading Canada, or annexing Canada economically and politically. This was a shameful example of how the CBC has ceased to be a dependable Canadian agency representing the voice of Canadians. The last thing Canadians need, is to pretend to be neutral while giving the Trump regime an edge to justify their desire to exploit Canadian resources and pervert Canadian democracy by any means they wish.

So: What do I think of Trump’s comments? I think they’re insulting,  offensive, and a rejection of 80 years of international law not to mention numerous treaties. It is very clear these are no longer friends or neighbours to be trusted.

I also think it  means Trump has done Canada, including our economy, a *favour*. For too long, we have had businesses look to the easier route to profit south rather than invest in east-west and south-north supply chains and product development. Yes, the US, via several trade relationships such as the AutoPact and then after that NAFTA and USCMA, was a source of wealth for many, but it was at the expense of Canadian jobs and most especially of ties of solidarity within our own country. But now, thanks to Trump’s insulting mouth (and our knowledge that he has an approximately 45% approval rating), more and more Canadians are paying attention to artisans and retailers and grocers producing in Canada. We are buying Product of, or Made in Canada, shopping local, and we are sharing lists of businesses across the provinces. We are addressing interprovincial trade barriers and also looking to diversify our balances of trade, including joining the EU.

I think that’s good for Canadians, and good for Canadian Confederation. While there will be short-term pain, it will give us long-term gain: better internal solidarity, self-sufficiency, and stronger domestic ties plus a more diverse corps of international trade and political partners.

So, on this, the anniversary of Putin’s 2020 invasion of Ukraine (and the 2014 one too), I think that Canadians — especially our elected leaders and our federal and provincial agencies’ civil servants — should be paying very close attention to what Trump is doing and has done, and we should be afraid.

He is dismantling all of the institutions which could block an authoritarian dictatorship:

•He has stacked and intimidated the federal and state judiciaries.
•He is culling the military intelligentsia and those who will abide by the rule of law.
•He is planning to raid the endowments of the major universities.
•He has dramatically decapitated and dismembered numerous Federal agencies by firing the civil servants. And
•He is tearing up all the international climate change commitments and opportunities for saving the planet.

These are all actions which have precedents in history, from Henry VII (who raided the monasteries of their wealth so as to prevent them from blocking his political manoeuvers), to Joseph Stalin (who purged his military prior to forced land collectivization and starvation of the peasantry — in Ukraine), to successive Chinese emperors (who always disposed of all the bureaucrats from the prior rulers), and Romans and Nazis who destroyed fertile lands rather than let someone else use them.

Trump is dismantling all the checks and balances, all the system structures which theoretically could block his manœuvers.

What remains of American bureaucracy, judiciary, civil institutions, in the next few months will either be gone or so  overwhelmed, or too MAGA-corrupted as to be unable to be allies to Canada. What remains will do nothing to respect or protect Canadian –or any other nations’– sovereignty. He has already demonstrated that in Palestine and Ukraine (and pretty soon he’ll do it in Taiwan and maybe South Korea).

This goes beyond the threat of tariffs or the opening forays in a trade negotiation. My fear is that without strong immediate action, eventually the US will buy or coerce control of Canadian mineral, water and people resources, his regime will skew our elections, and turn our citizenry into underpaid and underserved peons. We will be like Ukrainians are today, fighting to protect Canadian culture, history, lands, economy, sovereignty.

Trump’s 51st State threats make me think we have to reinforce our internal bonds and external boundaries, and we have to do it knowing that there is a tiny portion of quislings and seditionists in our country. Many of them live in my province of Alberta.

🇨🇦HyL

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Now, mid-September, after a summer laden with heat waves and wildfires, our government is reversing direction on climate-change prevention. As the PM said “the auto sector have enough on their plate right now”, so the minimum requirements for producing a vehicles are being postponed. To which I want to reply: you know who have “enough on their plate right now”? Atlantic cod, beluga, black ash trees, bumblebees, caribou, goldenseal, monarch butterflies, narwhal, otters, salmon, white lady’s slipper orchids, wolverines… (all endangered); plus all of us who want to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and not die guilty of catastrophic species and biodiversity loss.