At a first-thing-in-the-morning Introduction to Canadian politics class, one generation Z student takes a beat and lets her energy drink kick in before launching into her thoughts on Donald Trump’s threats toward Canada.
“I am feeling pyrrhic,” she types in the chat that runs alongside spoken discussion of the virtual class.
“I’m willing to suffer to make the beast bleed.”
Her bravado — call it a desire to stand up to a bully, to fight against injustice — is echoed by others in this increasingly popular Sheridan College class.
The young students are part of generation Z, ranging from high school age to almost 30 years old.
It’s a generation on a precipice.
Their country’s relationship with the most powerful nation in the world is fracturing before their eyes. Trump’s second term as U.S. president has upended decades of stability, with conflicts both threatened and real around the world, and it has cast the very future of “Canada” into question.
Some researchers and civic organizers believe there is an opportunity right now for the government — and more broadly, for the country — to rally a group of newly energized young people, who want to be part of protecting Canada’s future.
But there is also a parallel anxiety among young people in this country about what their suffering, or — in a more patriotic framing — sacrifice for Canada might look like.
They are already stressed about starting careers in the face of an AI revolution and the highest youth unemployment numbers since 2010, about finding affordable places to live in markets where they may never be able to own a home, and who feel they can’t count on questions about their future being taken seriously in the halls of power.
If generation Z is being asked what they can do for their country, they want to know what is being offered in return.
‘A wake-up call’
Shreya Rao, 22, a University of Waterloo student, says many of her contemporaries have grown up in a “hyper-globalized and mostly online world.”
“Post-pandemic, when we actually became adults, I don’t think anybody really thought about ‘Canada’ and like ‘Canadian values’ as much as they do now,” Rao says.
“I feel like (this moment) has been kind of a wake-up call.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at Davos earlier this year resonated with her. It felt honest about the current global reality and offered a rare sense of hope for the future.
“I am very, very optimistic that now that people are seeing their rights and their freedom being questioned, I feel like they’re going to start participating in governance a little bit more,” says Rao.
But she still has questions about how her generation will be included in a new vision for Canada, and worries about what will happen if they are left behind.
Jad El Ghali, 25, has been deeply interested in politics since he was a teenager, to the surprise of many of his friends who had always considered Canadian politics boring. That view has changed for many in the past year.
“They’re coming to me engaged. They’ve seen things on their TikTok. They’ve seen things on Instagram. And they’re like, ‘Wow, honestly, Canada’s doing so great on the world stage and it’s so important for us to stand up.’”
They are having conversations about sovereignty and national identity. “How do we separate it from just saying that we’re not American?” El Ghali says.
But no generation can be easily summed up.
Some polls reveal a pocket of Canadians open to becoming the 51st state — a number that can be higher among young people, in part because they see opportunities for their future.
And if more and more young people come to believe the social contract they have with their country is broken — that they cannot find jobs, homes, health care or a future that looks promising — what happens next?
Fears of a talent drain
An Ipsos poll from early 2025 found that young people were more worried than older generations about the risk to Canada’s independence, but were also more willing to become American if Canadians were offered full U.S. citizenship and conversion of financial assets into U.S. dollars.
It’s a finding that aligns with something El Ghali has heard from some of his friends. They’ve been leaving Canada to find better jobs, moving to the U.S. or to the Middle East.
Job options in the U.S. may not be what they once were, either, but the cost of living, employment and housing frustrations in Canada that saw a swing among young people toward the Conservatives in the most recent election remain. He says he thinks that if Canada doesn’t present an alternative, smart, young people will still leave.
Rao, the Waterloo student, whose interests span environmentalism, entrepreneurship and youth civic engagement, agrees.
“We’re going to lose a lot of our really strong talent,” she says, adding that among her university peers, the U.S. is still a destination of choice for the ambitious.
Thinking about Carney’s speech, she said: “I think it makes sense to hope that Canada will prosper on its own, but, in practice, it doesn’t seem like most people feel that or believe that.”
What does patriotism look like?
The question of what it means to be “Canadian” is a fraught one for generation Z.
“Canada has always had a sort of ‘patriotism lite’ version of patriotism,” says Joel Westheimer, professor and youth democracy researcher at the University of Ottawa.
Debates in recent years have questioned what patriotism should look like, especially for a generation reckoning with the legacy of colonialism, as well as the realities of racial and economic inequality.
Since Trump began threatening Canada’s independence, there has been an increase in overt patriotism, including among youth, at least in Westheimer’s observation, “but it’s balanced … by this sort of global orientation toward justice, so less a kind of blind loyalty to the state.”
Sam Reusch, executive director of youth civic group Apathy is Boring, says that in speaking to her colleagues across the country, there is a desire among young people to fight for something bigger.
“People do want to be part of something. I think that a lot of our civil society networks have broken down post-COVID,” says Reusch. “A lot of young people are coming up in the world where they have fewer relationships and fewer connections than previous generations.”
But what is the best way to be a good Canadian, even if that’s what someone wants to do?
Feeling left behind
It may be as simple as deciding how and where to spend money.
Some young people speak about paying closer attention to buying local and supporting Canadian businesses, but the path can be unclear. Some note the challenges of figuring out what qualifies as truly local in a globalized economy where U.S. companies have local factories that employ Canadian workers, or a Toronto-based clothing designer has products manufactured in China.
A January Abacus poll found that generation Z was choosing to travel more to the U.S. than older generations for tourism, but was also more judgmental of those who chose to vacation in the U.S.
“For younger adults especially, travel is no longer politically neutral. It is becoming a signal,” the poll suggested.
Spending choices are, of course, set against an economic reality. Generation Z isn’t at the peak of its spending power, compared to, say, gen-Xers.
And asking young Canadians to take on more challenges is complicated.
This is a group that can feel they have already sacrificed their dreams and their futures. Buying a car, let alone a home feels increasingly out of reach. Post-secondary education is getting more expensive. The job market for recent grads is bleak. “Funflation” — the cost of entertainment from concerts to travel to a nice meal out — is rising. Climate change progress feels stalled.
“There is a real nihilism there,” says Reusch. “A lot of people feel left behind.”
Some see this as a moment to consider introducing a form of national service, a way to provide purpose, connection to country and skill-building — or trying to boost military recruitment.
“History has shown us that when people experience adversity together, they can serve as a unifying, patriotic force,” says Anthony Robb, a former combat engineer and managing director of Canada Company, a charity that supports Canadian military members and their families.
“When our sovereignty is attacked — even if it’s just figuratively attacked — it reminds us all that being Canadian is one of the greatest privileges in the world, and it’s something to be proud of.”
The Canadian Armed Forces has seen an overall rise in applications, with Toronto receiving twice as many serious applications so far than last year. But it’s unclear how much of that is driven by U.S. threats and how much is due to changes in recruitment efforts, including bonuses.
“The economy is a driving factor — a lot of people looking for a job with stability,” said Petty Officer Second Class Kimberley O’Neill, a recruiter based in Toronto, adding that some of the increase is people looking to start a second career.
O’Neill didn’t comment on whether Trump’s remarks have been mentioned by recent applicants as a reason for signing up. But she did say there is a desire for purpose, which is part of what drew her to enrol 16 years ago.
“I don’t think that part has changed much for young people today,” she said.
Robb says that beyond the recent rise in applications to join the armed forces, “we should be encouraging a service-oriented mindset in all Canadians.”
A need for education
An Environics report from 2025 found that the trust young Canadians have in democratic institutions is much lower than those above the age of 60, but that it has still remained relatively stable in recent years rather than eroding as it has globally.
“I think we have an expectation that younger Canadians have the same attachment to Canada and to our national sovereignty and to Canadian democracy that older generations do,” says Beatrice Wayne, the director of research and policy at the Samara Centre for Democracy.
“I think that if we want that to be the case, we need to be doing a much, much better job of educating younger Canadians to participate in self-government. Right now, we do not have a strong civic education policy.”
She points to Finland “a middle power like us that sits next to a superpower that has made active threats against their sovereignty, has engaged in disinformation campaigns,” but which has made targeted investments into civic education. Wayne says the funding should come out of Canada’s defence budget, and be given according importance — this is the digital front line.
Digital and media literacy has to be a key part of civic education, she adds.
The chronically online generation Z tends to be aware of how its views and the views of others are influenced online, with foreign-owned social media algorithms that reward emotion over depth, the mainstream news-sharing bans on Meta platforms, the rise in independent news influencers and AI-fuelled misinformation.
But they also rely on the distorted world of social media for information, even as they are alarmed about the increasing hostility and polarization they find there, while also being worried about the social cost of doing or saying the wrong thing.
This is something Jad El Ghali thinks about often, especially when he sees the flurry of people on X ask Grok “Is this true?” and get an incorrect or misleading answer.
“You need to be very careful with who administers (civic education) and how you administer that, because it could come off so quickly as censorship, which you already have people talking about, or propaganda. So you need to able to do it in a way that’s authoritative and that people feel is true and right,” he says.
“How can the government do that? I have no idea,” he says. “I hope they figure it out.”
Preparing for the worst
Jenna Fung, 29, was born in 1997, the year China took control of Hong Kong. Pro-democracy protests became what seemed like a regular part of life.
“You somewhat normalize distress in order to survive in that contained chaos,” she says.
Moving to Canada in 2022 felt like getting a second life, and she feels privileged to find home in a place that aligns with many of her beliefs in freedom and democracy. But she has been alarmed to her core about what she sees as the U.S. descent into fascism, and is deeply frustrated that there are people who don’t seem to see it or — worse — support it.
“Our democracy is tenuous,” she says. “More tenuous than we’d like to think. And I think people in the U.S. are seeing that. Things that they took for granted are more fragile than they thought, and it is scary.”
She is fearful about the future of Canada, especially for young people. But that is also a powerful motivator. Fung thinks about Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War.” The last strategy “is to not to lose hope and fight with all the strength you have.”
What that actually looks like could take many forms, from ensuring Canadians have access to emergency food storage to expanding civic education to looking at the security steps Europe is taking, she says.
“We need to embrace the fear … to regain at least some sense of control,” she said. “We can carry on, alive, and make a place we all want.”
