Canadians hate being told they shouldn’t be a country especially by an increasingly authoritarian-leaning American regime much like Ukrainians hate the idea of being told the same by a Russian dictator who actually invaded their country. Both the U.S. and Canada are awakening to the grotesque political reality that an illiberal government has come to power in “the shining city upon a hill” as Ronald Reagan once pictured Washington DC.
Canada’s Liberal Party returned to power in the country’s federal election on April 28, securing Mark Carney his place as Prime Minister with the highest voter turnout in a decade, exceeding 70% in some ridings, and after trailing Pierre Polièvre’s Conservative Party in the polls by 16 points in January. The trigger for this turnabout was Donald Trump’s declaration that Canada should become a U.S. possession as its 51st state, falsely claiming that the Canadian public actually liked the idea.
Canadian rage toward Trump became very evident before his inauguration and grew further with his tariff threats. Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric with its populist appeal became increasingly problematic for Poilièvre and his Conservative Party which put forward similar ideas of governance. Moreover, Trump’s association with other like-minded authoritarian leaders as Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban would only raise further distrust among Canadians who regard Putin in particular very unfavorably.
Canada has approximately 1.4 million inhabitants of Ukrainian descent amounting to almost 4% of its population. The majority immigrated during the turmoil of the 20th century, many of whom settled in the three Prairie provinces as farmers where they account for 11% of the population. Many of these arrivals had survived the dictatorship of Josef Stalin and his genocide of Ukrainians in the early 1930s when he forcibly replaced small farming communities with state-run collectives, murdered landowners and those who opposed Russian authoritarianism, and confiscated large quantities of grain, transporting it to Russian cities. The resultant famine caused the death of millions of Ukrainians accounting for 13% of the population in what was called the Holodomor.
This nightmare was followed by Stalin’s mass killings of the later 1930s which came to be known as the Great Terror. Throughout the Soviet Union, more than 1.7 million people were arrested and 724,000 shot. In Ukraine, 123,421 Independence-minded peasants, religious leaders and academics along with several other national minorities whose political loyalty was questioned were shot and more than 60,000 were exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union to be lost. The Donbas region of eastern Ukraine became a particular target for this savagery.
A poll of Canadians, reported in February 2024, identified six in 10 remaining concerned over Russia’s war in Ukraine with four in 10 wanting Ukraine to continue fighting against the odds to drive Russia from all its land. The 2024 worldview of Russia and Putin by Pew Research tells much the same story with unfavorability ratings of 80% or more in the U.S., Canada, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Israel, and Italy while in Poland, Sweden, Australia, and Japan these rose to 90% or more.
Canadians have a healthy aversion toward authoritarianism in a world pockmarked with authoritarian regimes, some with a “disproportionately large impact on the global environment” such as Russia and China. It was once straightforward for Canada to align with the U.S. on many of its foreign policies pertaining to human rights, national sovereignty, climate accords and trade; this is now no longer the case. The U.S. recently sided with Russia, North Korea and Belarus opposing a European-drafted United Nations resolution that condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. With the Trump administration mentioning the possibility of lifting U.S. sanctions on Russia, pausing military aid for Ukraine and demanding Ukrainian territorial concessions going as far as suggesting that the U.S. may recognize Crimea as part of Russia, Canada and other NATO allies must see these as a betrayal of their common cause.
Support from Canada for Ukraine has not wavered over the past three years in the face of Russian disinformation regarding its war in Ukraine. The government has remained vigilant with warnings of its dissemination and provided means to combat it. In the meantime, Russia’s ability to wage war has been in decline both militarily and economically. On the other hand, Canada’s place on the world stage as a nation that has retained its integrity in support of what is right is set to grow now that its circumstances have changed. Its view of itself in this light as a standard for democracy opposite a country that has run afoul of its principles will show it to be the more strong-willed and determined.
Copyright @Kost Elisevich, MD, PhD 2025. All rights reserved. Any illegal reproduction of this content will result in immediate legal action.
