How Deep Does Canadian Nationalism Run?

Our flag-waving commitment to the country might be shallow and fleeting, but savvy political actors recognize a moment, and how to seize it.

We don’t do metaphorical subtlety in this space. Photo by Olivia Brewer on Unsplash

I’m writing a book about nationalism in Canada, so I’ve been thinking a lot about what exactly that phenomenon is, where it comes from, how robust it is, and what we might do — or not do — with it. It’s easy to answer the second of those four questions. The surge of Canadian nationalism is a function of Donald Trump and the United States, outside aggressors who’ve inadvertently rallied a fractious country to (more or less) unite and assert our sovereignty, at least in a shallow, rhetorical sense.

In February, as Trump was levying tariffs and talking about making Canada the 51st state, a poll from Leger found that more than a quarter of Canadians saw the US as an enemy. Now, a Pew poll finds that nearly 60 percent of the country view the Americans as a threat to Canada — three times as many who cited the Yankees as a menace in 2019. Our nationalism is a reaction.

But how deep does that nationalism run? That remains to be seen in the medium- and long-term, but my bet is that it’s shallow. The probability that our unity, or “unity,” fractures is high. Our history teaches us that any sense of national togetherness is typically illusory or, at least, short-lived. Think of the pandemic, for instance. Look beneath any apparent collective pulling together and you’ll see the struggles, disagreements, and resentments that lie at the core of our federation. The budding Alberta separatist movement is one example. There are others, including resistance to infrastructure projects, such as pipelines, that we are being told is thoroughly in the national — and nationalist — interest.

The fact is that politics is often a zero-sum undertaking or close to it. People have all kinds of red lines and sub-national, local, and personal commitments that may precede and overrule attachments to a much more abstract, distant national identity. Few forces or phenomenon can neutralize the effects of a world in which you have multiple, often conflicting, commitments and in which can’t always get what you want, but may nonetheless try to. The implications of this for Canada are significant.