9 Justin Trudeau: The Canada–United States Balancing Act

Introduction: Framing Justin Trudeau’s Leadership

From Justin Trudeau’s “Sunny Ways”^[1] victory speech after winning the general election on 19 October 2015 to his stepping down as leader of the Liberal Party and prime minister of Canada in late 2025, his government was one of a balancing act. On the one hand, it had to cooperate with the United States, while on the other, it had to pursue national autonomy for Canada in that relationship. In that regard, Trudeau’s leadership was similar to that of other prime ministers, because as the United States has always played an oversized role in Canadian politics. Nevertheless, Trudeau’s leadership on the US file also had important differences in several distinct ways. This essay will argue that Justin Trudeau’s tenure as prime minister was shaped by the need to manage the legacy of his predecessor, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who had pursued what might be considered a pro-American structural alignment with the United States even as Trudeau simultaneously advanced a progressive Canadian identity. Harper’s agenda had the effect of fusing Canadian markets to American ones and made exporters “increasingly dependent on access to the U.S. market.”^[2] Harper’s policies also created a relationship between the two countries that moved to continuously networked governance structures instead of two states interacting occasionally.^[3] While Trudeau was essentially content to pursue the economic relationship and integration that had developed hitherto with the United States, especially after the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993, he turned to cultural issues as symbolic leadership to preserve Canadian identity and distinguish Canada from its American neighbour. Trudeau built a distinctive Canadian identity on labour rights, environmental stewardship, and multilateral diplomacy. How Trudeau handled this balancing act of trade and US relations forced him to work within the deeply engrained and structural constraints that were in place when he became prime minister. The essay begins with those constraints that were part of the Harper legacy to consider the ways Trudeau fused the Canadian system to the American one. Then we will turn to how Trudeau reframed the idea of Canadian sovereignty. Moving away from the hard-to-change economic policies to cultural ones as a way to foster a separate Canadian identity is then considered. We will then shift to one of the most impactful negotiations on the Canada–US relationship during Trudeau’s tenure, namely, the Canada United States Mexico Agreement (CUSMA, successor of NAFTA), focusing specifically on the progressive aspects of trade that the Trudeau government engaged in during the negotiations which created a symbolic resistance to the United States. Lastly, a significant aspect of Trudeau’s term as prime minister was energy politics with the Americans; most importantly, pipelines and the strain of existing continental energy dependence will be addressed. In concluding, we will use all these points to show that although his government’s policies were very much determined by the framework inherited from Stephen Harper and previous prime ministers, and Justin Trudeau forged a unique path to Canada’s cultural sovereignty.

Pro-US Landscape: Justin Trudeau’s Inheritance

When a prime minister assumes control of the government from a previous leader, it is far from a clean slate. This transition has taken place many times throughout Canada’s history; however, in Justin Trudeau’s case a myriad of large systemic changes had occurred in the previous era that were extremely hard to reverse. One such policy change was “the Orwellian-titled Marketing Freedom for Farmers Act,”^[4] which became law in December 2011. This Act destroyed the democratically created and elected Canadian Wheat Board and opened the door for foreign ownership of Canadian farming assets by multinational corporations with majority shares being owned by Americans and Saudi Arabians. This loss of collective Canadian control over the country’s own agricultural production undermined sovereignty in a way that was irreversible.

Another example is that of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), founded in 1958. Although the NORAD agreement was not new to Canada, having its roots in the Cold War, the way the agreement was continued was novel. The original agreement had identified expiration dates where Canada could leave the arrangement and develop its own sovereign defence initiatives not tied directly to the United States. Prime Minister Harper may be accused of eroding Canada’s sovereignty by committing Canada to an indefinite deal with the United States.^[5] Periodic points of review were typical for such an agreement, but the likelihood of either side withdrawing from the deal, due to deep military integration and lack of any expiration dates, is extremely unlikely.

Before Harper, Canada had set itself apart from the United States and maintained its sovereignty through a complex framework of regulations. These created a disincentive structure to keep out the deluge of American money and control that might flow into Canada. Such regulations also allowed Canada to differentiate itself from the United States by having control over what it deems acceptable business practices. Prime Minister Harper, however, did away with some of those regulations in favour of an approach that further integrated the two countries, with the effect of eroding Canadian sovereignty. Two such measures were the Beyond the Border Action Plan and the Regulatory Cooperation Council (RCC), both established in 2011. The Beyond the Border Action Plan was intended to ensure that Canada and the United States would share security responsibility at border crossings to enhance cross-border law enforcement which would speed up the flow of legitimate trade and travel to facilitate trade and economic growth. This Plan further integrated the two countries and created an alignment of the two nations that was touted as promoting economic competitiveness. Stemming from this Plan, the RCC was created, aiming to remove regulations that impeded trade between the two countries.^[6] Even if the RCC was not legally binding on either country, it is easy to see how the might of the American economy in such a partnership could easily overpower Canada. For example, if a business practice is environmentally acceptable in the United States but is not acceptable in Canada, the Council could seek to overturn or bypass the legislation in Canada under the guise of cooperation. The result would be a lack of Canadian regulatory independence.

Prime Minister Harper also made other changes that had the possibility of further integrating Canada with the United States. These came in the form of tax cuts and foreign investment thresholds. Harper’s corporate tax cut from 22 percent to 15 percent was meant to entice foreign investment through a lower tax burden.^[7] The result was twofold: (1) it lowered tax revenues necessary to fund Canadian government programs, and (2) it set up the possibility of financial reliance on American investment to prop up the Canadian government. Once in place, the policy was also very “sticky” in that it was hard to reverse for fear of the flight of capital back to the United States. Under Harper, changes were made to the Investment Canada Act (ICA) in 2009 to 2013. This Act increased the review threshold by more than 200 percent, with the result that very few American investments being reviewed. Without review, a limited amount of American investment was disallowed; however, by the end of Harper’s third term as prime minister, there were only four reviewable investments in all of Canada per year.^[8] Harpers plan as implemented in the ICA was touted in Throne Speech. “Our Government will open Canada’s doors further to venture capital and to foreign investment.”^[9] With the doors thrown wide open to American investment, Canada would forfeit even more control of its economy. Once these doors are open, there is very little chance of closing them again.

Through those Harper initiatives, Canada became more structurally reliant on the United States. When Justin Trudeau took office in 2015, he was left to deal with a structure that was cemented in place and not easily changed. Trudeau did not intend to reverse these policies, which would have been very disruptive to the status quo. Instead, he chose to use narrative, culture, and values to set Canada apart to ensure that the position that Harper had put into place could not completely take root.

Leadership and Image: Reframing Sovereignty

Justin Trudeau’s tenure as prime minister has often been defined through his intense attentiveness to appearances. It could be argued, however, that this was less about vanity and more about a deliberate leadership strategy. In a political landscape that had been structurally altered by Stephen Harper and had resulted in diminished Canadian autonomy, Trudeau transformed his style into a substantive plan. This was achieved through the assertion of cultural sovereignty when economic sovereignty was out of reach. He did this through language and carefully crafted narratives aimed to distinguish Canada by its identity – and that came to be the defining characteristic of his time as prime minister; this was reminiscent of the workings of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Justin’s father, who was Canada’s prime minister for sixteen years, from 1968 to 1979 and again from 1980 to 1984.

Although this is not a new way to look at the Justin Trudeau legacy, what is novel is the underlying reasoning behind Trudeau taking this strategic approach. Stephen Maher’s recent book, The Prince, opens by setting up a link between the Machiavellian framework of the prince and Trudeau’s leadership style through perception. Maher argues that Trudeau is among leaders whose power rests on the management of public image rather than on the mastery of public policy.^[10] In his book, he alludes to Trudeau’s style, but never really dives into the issue of whether it was a choice or a strategy. It is argued here that managing his public image was Trudeau’s style, but also that it was first and foremost a choice he made as the best strategy to assert a sovereign national identity.

Other decisions that Justin Trudeau took as prime minister demonstrate that his approach to leadership was methodical and calculated. In the leaders’ debate during the 2015 general election campaign, Thomas Mulcair, leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP) tried to corner Trudeau by asking him to provide a specific number for the votes that would be needed for Quebec to separate from Canada. During that stand-off, Trudeau planned a trap by not answering, leading Mulcair to press him harder and harder for an answer. Once Mulcair was in too deep to back down, Trudeau snapped the trap by saying, “I’ll give you a number. Nine. My number is nine. Nine Supreme Court justices said one vote is not enough.”^[11]  This episode shows Trudeau as completely calculated and prepared when it came to constructing an image and executing a plan. The Trudeau team followed that moment instantly with a coordinated media campaign showing this wasn’t just blind luck.^[12] This further supports the argument that Trudeau’s image was carefully crafted and always with a purpose.

There was also Justin Trudeau’s cultivation and continuation of the “Trudeaumania” phenomenon that carried on from his father’s time, with the difference that Justin Trudeau’s carefully curated image would be through social media. Trudeau did this by crafting a down to earth and likable persona through posts and pictures of him doing yoga or being with his family. “Justin Trudeau has even been dubbed Canada’s ‘first prime minister of the Instagram age.’”^[13] This carefully curated image went from just the personal right to his decisions on Cabinet appointments. It was clear, for example, that “the visual debut of the gender-balanced cabinet was a deliberate attempt to signal a decisive break with the Harper years.”^[14] These choices were a strategy, and they were carefully constructed by media communication experts, further showing that this image making was an intentional choice as opposed to just Justin Trudeau’s style.

Labour and CUSMA: Progressive Identity as Symbolic Resistance

With the limitations on Trudeau’s ability to change Canada’s systemic and institutionalized economic dependence on the United States, negotiations on an extremely consequential agreement were opened, namely, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which came to be replaced by the Canada United States Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), as it is called by the Canadian government and press (Americans call it USMCA). During his first week as President of the United States, Donald Trump said in an interview with the Associated Press, “I am very upset with NAFTA. I think NAFTA has been a catastrophic trade deal for the United States.”^[15] Clearly, this was going to be a point of tension between the two countries going forward. NAFTA, together with all the other policies discussed earlier in this essay, showed that the United States had gained a massive amount of integration into Canada’s economy, but Trump wanted still more. Canada was entering into these negotiations at a major disadvantage.

Justin Trudeau was eager to use the NAFTA negotiations to solidify Canada’s identity as a progressive and sovereign nation. Although, for the reasons identified earlier, there was little room to move economically in the deal, Trudeau pushed to include labour advocacy as a humanitarian values-based assertion of Canada’s autonomy and an important Canadian value. The deal Canada proposed and ultimately signed did not change radically from the previous one, but it “represents a significant legal innovation” through its enforcement mechanisms.^[16] These legal innovations include shifting the burden of proof off workers when it came to violations, making investigations easier to trigger. When triggered, there is now a Rapid Response Mechanism that is faster moving than was hitherto the case. This is because the investigators now had enforcement tools not easily blocked by politicians. These new frameworks were to ensure compliance and, moving forward, Canada ability to lean into its values.

The way Trudeau publicly emphasized progressive trade issues mirrored his domestic focus on inclusion and diversity. He invoked ideals such as fairness, gender equality, and Indigenous rights to cast his policy as moral diplomacy. He hoped to achieve such inclusions in CUSMA by introducing “new commitments related to violence against workers, migrant worker protections, and workplace discrimination” which would be the first of such inclusions in any North American trade deal.^[17] These policies and regulations were in contrast to Prime Minister Harper’s previous stance of deregulation and competitiveness. These symbolic gestures rebranded the framework of the trade deal under the banner of progressive Canadian values.

Although a progressive trade deal may have reframed the conversation on Canada’s identity and sovereignty, it did little to address the issues, for example, labour reforms in Mexico, that it clamed to support. The new trade agreement may have strengthened labour rights in Mexico, but it “did not change the underlying labor and social insurance architecture.”^[18] This means CUSMA could be viewed as a symbolic win that did little to change the continental inequality. Ultimately, Trudeau’s approach led to what has been called progressivity without productivity.^[19] The new agreement did, however, include a framework for dispute resolution when it comes to unionized labour in Mexico, which matched Mexico’s aspirations when it came to advancing labour rights, so it could be seen as a win and as a backstop for any cultural backsliding.^[20]

During the final negotiations on the trade deal, Trudeau involved labour leader Jerry Dias, head of Unifor, the largest private sector union in Canada.^[21] Dias symbolized the largest Canadian stakeholder in this agreement, which would be the Unifor workers; however, this was widely understood as more of a gesture towards labour inclusion. In any case, this symbolic gesture presented labour diplomacy as moral resistance to US economic dominance and profits. Even if CUSMA largely just “builds upon the NAFTA framework,”^[22] with limited structural changes, it was meant as cultural insulation aimed at preserving the Canadian identity.

Prime Minister Trudeau’s stance on CUSMA further backs up the broader thesis of this essay that with the structural dependence of Canada on the United States being unchangeable, sovereignty becomes performative. This is done by embedding progressive Canadian values of fairness, equality, and workers’ rights into the architecture of Canada’s dependence on the United States. This approach showed that progressive trade was not resistance through divergence from the United States but resistance though narrative. This narrative performance becomes Trudeau’s underlying strategy for Canadian sovereignty.

Energy Politics: The Strain of Continental Dependence

In a statement Justin Trudeau made during US President Joe Biden’s first day in office, he addressed an issue that had become one of Biden’s campaign promises: the promise was to shut down the Keystone XL project. That oil pipeline project “would span nearly 1,200 miles, carrying carbon-heavy oil south from Canada to the Gulf Coast.”^[23] In his statement,  Trudeau’s simultaneously said things like “we welcome the President’s commitment to fight climate change” while also saying “we are disappointed but acknowledge the President’s […] promise on Keystone XL.”^[24] This duality would come to define Trudeau’s approach to energy politics and underscore the burden of continental energy dependence for Canada, with the United States purchasing vast quantities of oil which allowed the government to undertake several initiatives, including the ability to fund social programs in Canada.

After his speech on Keystone XL, Trudeau made a massive decision in asserting Canada’s energy sovereignty over the United States, namely, the decision surrounding the Trans Mountain Pipeline (TMX) that “transports diluted bitumen from Edmonton, Alberta through the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean port of Vancouver.”^[25] This pipeline was contentious, to say the least, with pushback from both Indigenous and environmental groups. Unlike other such projects, this one was exclusively in Canada and would expand the market for heavy oil to foreign markets outside of the United States. It was framed by Trudeau as a nation-building and sovereignty project. But, with all the environmental concerns, it was deemed unfeasible by private investors. The TMX project stalled. Trudeau was at a crossroads. Would he let this project become abandoned and stick to his environmental promises? Or would he use this project to assert sovereignty and make it a cause around which to rally? Trudeau went with the latter, saying the project was tied to the “fate of the nation.”^[26] As prime minister, Justin Trudeau made the decision to nationalize the TMX pipeline and to buy the pipeline on behalf of Canadians. This shows that, given the chance, Trudeau would choose to latch onto a project that can set Canada apart from the United States, regardless of the environmental and financial costs involved. This choice supports the thesis that Trudeau was doing everything in his power to solidify Canada’s identity, in face of the structures in place constraining him when it came to options.

How do Trudeau’s energy politics align with his use of image politics to assert Canadian sovereignty? Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was able to simultaneously use what might be characterized as “disappointment politics “when dealing with a pipeline in the United States and Canadian nation building when buying the TMX pipeline to create an image. That image demonstrated that Trudeau cared about progressive social issues while at the same time wanting Canadian independence. We can now expand on the scope of dependence as first described in this essay. At first glance, it seemed that Canada’s dependence was only on the United States, but a more wholistic approach shows that Canada is dependant on selling the resources it extracts, not only to the United States. In short, Canada’s ability to be sovereign and have its own identity is curtailed by being beholden to the selling of the resources it extracts. This means that Canada is sovereign in rhetoric but dependent at its core on the structures that underpin its relationships with other countries. For Trudeau, asserting sovereignty came to be about creating a Canadian identity that pioneered progressive social issues.

Conclusion: Cultural Sovereignty in a Structurally Dependent Nation

On becoming prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau inherited a government that through the decisions of previous prime ministers, including Stephen Harper, was structurally dependent on the United States. This economic integration could not – and cannot – easily be undone. With this reality firmly in place, Trudeau turned to his strategy of image making to create a distinct identity for Canada. From his negotiations with the United States on trade deals to his decisions about pipelines, this strategy of image politics was a through line. Trudeau became the architect of this cultural sovereignty, and in many ways, this has been carried forward with the current government of Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Canadian identity survived through projecting its cultural image and values. If Canada was unable to meaningfully reclaim economic, military, or regulatory sovereignty, the best approach in asserting the country’s identity may be storytelling and image making. In this symbolic space, Trudeau tried to create a distinct national identity. He saw himself as the image maker and princely figure, as Stephen Maher describes in his book.^[27] In Trudeau’s, eyes Canada’s autonomy depends less on renegotiations of treaties, pipelines, or defence pacts and more on how the country is seen culturally. In that way, cultural sovereignty becomes a final frontier of national agency. Never about transforming structures that intertwined Canada with the United States, Trudeau’s promise of “Sunny Ways”^[28] was about illuminating a path within those structures – a path to cultural sovereignty.