European Canada

“Wouldn’t it be lovely if Canada were the 28th state of the European Union instead of the 51st state of the United States?” Finnish president Alexander Stubb asked a few months ago. The question was neither a provocation nor a mere intellectual exercise. Although it is hard to imagine a North American country fully joining a European club, the prospect of a much closer alliance to the point of making Canada an “associate member of the EU” — has moved out of the realm of political fiction. Today it is a real possibility.

With his strategy of harassment and undermining of his northern neighbor, threats of annexation, and an absurd and brutal trade war, Donald Trump has pushed Canadians to diversify their interests. Prime Minister Mark Carney foreshadowed this in his speech at Davos earlier this year. Now Ottawa is putting it into practice. Europe cannot miss the opportunity. The Canadian prime minister, one of the leaders who best understands the new disorder, will address the European Parliament on Thursday and will stage a rapprochement that, if successful, would be a tangible example of strategic autonomy — so often invoked but rarely applied — and necessary to defend democracies in a world of authoritarian powers.

Canada is a singular America, a country closely connected to the United States by lifestyle, landscapes and continental span, by cross-border trade, by human and cultural exchanges, by a history shaped by the frontier spirit and also by a savage, predatory conquest of indigenous peoples. At the same time, it is the America tied to the British Crown, French-speaking in part of its territory, and with a conception of the welfare state and the common good that is closer to the social democracies of the Old Continent than to its southern neighbor. Trump has violently broken that balance and caused a trauma. Carney has responded with logic and realism by redirecting his alliance policy toward Europe with a strategic framework, still to be negotiated, that could include everything from access to technology or raw materials and energy to the free movement of workers.

The obstacles are enormous, as shown by the fact that 10 of the 27 EU member states have still not ratified the free trade agreement with Canada, a more modest project than the one now under discussion. It is also hard to imagine how the Canadian economy, still so intertwined with the U.S., could be Europeanized and take on the full body of rules and bureaucracy that in some countries trigger heated debates about sovereignty and democracy, and partly also explain Brexit.

Even if Canada never became a full member, another issue would be the comparative grievance of giving it preference while there are candidates who have been waiting at the EU’s gates for decades. For Ottawa, moreover, there is a negotiating tactic element aimed at the U.S.: it is a way to show Trump that Canadians have other cards to play. All of this is true. But it is also true that, all too often, Europe has given the impression that it does not believe in the power granted to it by the single market, its population and its economic weight. That power is real. And if it wants to exercise it in full and avoid irrelevance, new forms of partnership with countries that share its values and interests are essential. The result would be a more European Canada and a stronger Europe, thanks to Trump.

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