Canada’s security complex has woken up to Trump’s menace

“These are dark days,” Canada’s prime minister-designate, Mark Carney, told a hushed gathering of party faithful on March 9th. “Dark days brought on by a country we can no longer trust.”

In normal times, Mr Carney’s speech would have celebrated his ascent to the peak of Canadian politics. Instead it was foreboding. An escalating economic war with the United States has Canada’s trade, security and intelligence officials asking questions that would have been unthinkable before Donald Trump’s election. What is America’s president prepared to do to force Canada to become the 51st state? And what must Canada do to prepare for adversity rather than an alliance across the world’s longest undefended border?

Wayne Eyre, who retired as Canada’s top general in 2024, says his country no longer has “a benign superpower to the south”. “For far too long we’ve had a case of strategic apathy, bordering on strategic negligence,” he says. “Hopefully now this is a call to strategic action.”

No one in Canada’s defence establishment believes that Mr Trump is preparing a land invasion. Any battle for Canada would be brief and decisive. The Canadian Armed Forces has 63,500 personnel. The United States has 1.3m active-duty soldiers. But as Trump appointees have taken up responsibilities at the pinnacle of the Pentagon, the CIA and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, their Canadian counterparts have started to whisper among themselves about whether they can trust the Trump team with Canada’s secrets.

This unease threatens a secrets-sharing relationship that goes back to the second world war, when Canada and the United States set up organisations to co-operate on defence and security. The North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad) was established in 1958. With an American commander and a Canadian deputy, its job was to respond to the threat of Russian missiles and bombers. Its role was later expanded to aerospace and maritime protection for all of North America. Soldiers from both countries work side by side, on joint air patrols and along the border. “The Canadian armed forces can plug-and-play with their US counterparts,” says Philippe Lagassé, an academic who advises the Canadian government on military procurement.

Sensitive information gleaned from agents, as well as ground stations and satellites bristling with antennae, are readily shared. It was American intelligence agencies which initially captured recordings of the hitmen who planned and carried out the murder of Sikh-independence firebrand Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia. Canada used that intelligence to make the case that the Indian government was behind the killing.

Spooks on both sides of the border are unsure whether the Trump appointees have the temperament for handling such sensitive information. To wit, Kristi Noem, the US secretary of homeland security, who is responsible for securing the borders of the United States against foreign attack. In January Ms Noem danced back and forth over a piece of tape fixed to the floor of the Haskell Free Library and Opera House marking the border between Vermont and Quebec, repeating her boss’s annexation taunt with each jurisdictional hop: “USA number one . . . the 51st state.”

Canadian officials were appalled. They should not have been surprised. Mr Trump’s scorn for Canadian nationhood has been consistent. On February 3rd, during a tense phone call with Canada’s outgoing prime minister, Justin Trudeau, the American president reeled off a list of trade irritants. Then, with a manner that sounded like an afterthought according to a senior member of Mr Trudeau’s staff, Mr Trump raised the treaty signed in 1908 by Theodore Roosevelt and King Edward VII that finalised the border between the two countries. “He didn’t threaten to tear up the treaty,” says the Trudeau staffer. “He said, ‘Hey Justin, you know about this 1908 treaty that governs the border? It’s very interesting.’ He was clearly trying to soften us up and scare us.”

Mr Trump has not tempered his territorial ambitions since that call. He has amplified them. On March 11th, he posted a misty vision of what the new country would look like to his social-media feed: “The artificial line of separation drawn many years ago will finally disappear, and we will have the safest and most beautiful Nation anywhere in the World.”

According to the Canadians, not all Trump staffers have bought into his vision to the same extent. Mr Trudeau’s political staff had drawn up a list of people in the Trump administration whom they believed they could reason with, and those who were true MAGA believers. For example Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, is considered “a professional to deal with”.

So far, there are no such reservations at the soldier-to-soldier level. Canadian defence officials say their senior American counterparts are queasy about Mr Trump’s efforts to hobble an ally. “They’re horrified,” says one. “They know that weakening your allies emboldens and opens doors for your enemies.”

Canada is a net importer of intelligence from the United States, but it does have serious bespoke capabilities in signals intelligence, run by its Communications Security Establishment. “The Americans would find themselves deaf and blind in some parts of the world without us,” says Jody Thomas, who was Mr Trudeau’s national security adviser. “Canada is, for instance, their eyes and ears in the Arctic. They would also find themselves missing crucial information in the maritime approaches to the continent.”

General Gregory Guillot, the head of the US Northern Command and of Norad, told the Ottawa conference that Canada’s contribution to continental defence is invaluable. General Guillot is eager to strengthen a relationship that is fraying at the political level. He encouraged Canada’s interest in helping develop Mr Trump’s “Golden Dome” seabed-to-space missile-defence shield.

Mr Trump has justly pilloried Canada for failing to meet its NATO commitment to spend 2% of its GDP on defence. Mr Carney has promised to accelerate military procurements to get there by 2030, two years faster than his predecessor.

Some of America’s allies have opted for flattery to fend off Mr Trump’s tariff threats. Canada, facing open attacks on its sovereignty, has opted for defiant retaliation. The relationship between North America’s defenders, once seamless, is suddenly popping its stitches. ■