Some confusion has crept into how Canada should protect its economic sovereignty.
Canadians aren’t confused.
They have consistently held the sensible view that Canada should maintain beneficial ties with the U.S. while diversifying our trading partners.
But while Canadians have spent more than a year walking the talk on “elbows up” and “Buy Canadian,” some members of Canada’s leadership class have not shown the same resolve.
They have embraced a “Fortress North America” model of coexistence with the U.S. and Mexico. It would bind the three members of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement even closer together.
This more thoroughly co-ordinated grouping, led by the U.S. as its dominant economy, would then turn its back on the rest of the world.
As Canada’s economic integration with the U.S. became even deeper in the Fortress North America model, Canada would be forced to align its foreign policy, including trade, with Washington. “Align” is a euphemism for submission.
“’Fortress North America’ is a framework that defines Canada’s value to the United States as conditional on continuous alignment with American economic security priorities,” Joel Baum, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, wrote in a May edition of the journal Policy Options.
Proposals for new Canadian free-trade deals with India, say, or the Mercosur trade pact of leading South American economies, would probably be subject to U.S. approval in a Fortress arrangement.
And “Fortress” would give the U.S. a stronger hand in challenging Canadian policy in industrial development and agricultural subsidies, support for cultural industries, and immigration policy.
The decoupling of Fortress North America from the rest of the world would begin with freezing China out of our continental market and denying it investment opportunities here.
By logical extension, next would come the isolation of North America from the European Union, another rival to the U.S. among economic superpowers.
Eventually, the Fortress walls would protect the North American economy from competitors in Japan, South Korea and Australia.
That would be a sharp reversal from the outward-looking foreign policy that Mark Carney has promoted since he became prime minister.
With the stated intention of distancing Canada from the U.S. while maintaining mutually beneficial ties with America, Carney has reinforced Canada’s trade and security alliance with the 27 member states of the European Union.
And Carney has restored passably harmonious relations with major economies from which Canada became estranged in the Trudeau years, including China, India, Mexico and Saudi Arabia.
That outreach, remarkable for its speed and breadth, is in service to a chilling line from Carney’s celebrated Davos speech in January.
Canada had steadily weakened itself from generations of ever deeper economic integration with the U.S., Carney said, without naming the hegemon to the south.
“You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration,” Carney said, “when integration becomes the source of your subordination.”
But Fortress North America would increase that integration, further subordinating Canadian economic, defence and foreign policy to the whims of Washington.
Yet in a May speech in Toronto, Carney said Canada “remains open to deeper integration, including options for Fortress North America in (certain) sectors.”
Carney didn’t identify the sectors where he believes increased integration with the U.S. is possible. But they are believed by Canadian trade officials to include steel, aluminum, energy, agriculture, softwood lumber and autos.
Tim Hodgson, the federal energy minister, recently told a U.S. audience that Canada stands ready to help the U.S. achieve dominance in energy, casting Canada as an eager partner in America’s industrial goals.
The Fortress model also draws support from the Business Council of Canada, the group representing Canada’s biggest corporations.
And Pierre Poilievre, the federal Tory leader, urges Carney to make haste in deepening Canada’s economic integration with the U.S. to prove that Canada is indispensable to America.
If we prove that proposition, the U.S. has all the more reason to make Canada the 51st state.
The Fortress idea did not originate in Mexico or the U.S., where President Donald Trump favours a “Fortress America” that doesn’t buy cars or other goods from its two neighbours.
Instead, it was Ontario Premier Doug Ford who in January 2025 first popularized what he called “Fortress Am-Can.” Ford’s notion, which soon gained prominence, would have Canadian economic policy moving in near lockstep with that of the U.S.
There is more than a whiff of desperation to the Fortress idea. Those who promote it don’t have much confidence in Canada continuing to navigate a successful coexistence with the U.S. and other trade partners.
These isolationists are a timid lot, generally averse to non-U.S. jurisdictions and clinging to their easily accessible markets in Michigan and Ohio.
Their attitude evokes a line from an 1864 speech by Thomas D’Arcy McGee, among the most ardent champions of a Canadian federation. “Who will oppose — who are now opposed to the union? Only those who have a vested interest in their own insignificance.”
