UTM professors deliberate Trump’s threat to Canadian sovereignty

As tensions between Canada and the US intensify, a panel of political science faculty at UTM gathered last week to discuss how shifts in American foreign policy under President Donald Trump have reshaped Canada’s security, global alliances, and international standing. 

The panel, held on March 13 in UTM’s Instructional Building and organized by the Political Science Department, brought together six professors to examine Canada’s geopolitical challenges. They touched on several topics, including the ongoing trade war with the US, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) commitments, environmental policies, and the war in Ukraine. 

Setting the scene

Opening the panel, moderator Steven Bernstein — a distinguished professor and chair of the political science department — remarked on the second Trump presidency, “Things that we would normally read in [parody] outlets, now we read on the pages of the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, in our daily news.” 

Bernstein emphasized that “nowhere has the disruption been greater than it has been in Canada.” He pointed to an “unjustifiable” trade war between Canada and the US, Trump’s attempts to revisit “long-settled treaties” along the Canada–US border, and his threat to make Canada the 51st state through economic coercion. 

The panel discussion then commenced, with each professor presenting a five-minute opening argument before taking questions from the audience. Each professor framed the challenges Trump posed through the lens of their area of specialization. 

Will Canada be invaded?

Professor Noel Anderson, an expert in international relations, focused on Canadian sovereignty and the potential threat of military invasion from the US. In his talk, he tried to answer the question of whether Canadians should worry about Trump’s annexation threats. 

“We all know that Trump has often demonstrated disregard for Canadian sovereignty with repeated references to Canada as the 51st state and to Trudeau as its governor,” said Anderson. “He’s referred to the Canada–US border as an artificial line of separation, and he’s questioned the validity of the 1908 treaty that finalized that border.”

He added that “an unprovoked military attack on Canada would violate international law, but if [an invasion was] framed as a response to a fabricated threat, [by] invoking border security or counterterrorism, US military commanders would feel pressure to comply.” 

If the US officially accuses Canada of something like being overrun by terrorist cartels, which is a claim Trump’s advisor Peter Navarro has made in the past, Anderson explained that it could create “an opening for military aggression under the guise of military national security.”

And yet, Anderson argued that an attempted US military annexation of Canada remained unlikely because the “long and undefended US–Canada border would further complicate efforts to contain a Canadian insurgency” and “the 800,000 Canadians that currently reside in the US furnish additional opportunities for… espionage, sabotage, subversion within the US.”

How does Trump pose a threat to Canada’s environment?

Addressing the environmental challenges posed by Trump’s presidency, Professor Andrea Olive, an expert in environmental policy, environmental justice, and conservation policy, explored Canada’s struggle to maintain “its climate commitments” while Trump makes efforts to shift the focus away from these issues. 

“The challenge will be, is Canada going to continue with its climate commitments — our net zero pledge, our Paris Accord commitments — or are we going to change the channel?” said Olive. “I think that a Trump presidency is really going to be a challenge to our natural resource extraction policies.”

Olive highlighted Trump’s interest in exploiting Canadian natural resources, including the Columbia River, Arctic minerals, and freshwater. 

“If you remember the California wildfires, he kept talking about ‘Canada can turn on the tap,’” she said, emphasizing Trump’s ambition to redirect the Columbia River, which originates in British Columbia and flows from BC through the US Pacific Northwest.

How will the trade wars affect Canada?

Assistant Professor Spyridon Kotsovilis, another expert in international relations, spoke about tariffs and trade relations between Canada and the US. 

Against the prospect that President Trump’s trade war with Canada is a form of economic coercion leading to annexation, Kotsovilis projected a grim outlook: higher manufacturing costs, as tariffs make it more expensive to purchase raw materials; slow or negative growth, as a result of consumers purchasing less due to higher prices; and a likely recession. 

“There’s also supply disruptions, layoffs…” he added, “more broadly, retaliation, escalation, the unravelling of economic integration, and the erosion of trust among long-standing allies.”

What’s Canada’s role in NATO?

Professor Edward Schatz — the director of the Centre for European and Eurasian Affairs and an expert on Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia — was the next speaker focused on how the rhetoric of Vladimir Putin’s regime — specifically the claim that Ukraine is “not a real country” — mirrors rhetoric deployed by the Trump administration against Canada.

Schatz argued that if Ukraine succumbs to Russia, ripple effects will be felt in Canada because under NATO, “we’re so tightly interconnected.”

“As long as NATO means something… and Canada is a key player, it has an obligation to the security and defense, the common defense, of the European members of NATO.”

Sessional Lecturer Arnd Jurgensen, an expert on Canadian and US foreign policy, analyzed the future of NATO and Canada’s role within it.

Jurgensen emphasized Canada’s “great stake” in preserving the “rules-based international order,” warning that without it, “the powerful do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.”

“We must recognize, as Canadians, that we are not among the powerful,” Jurgensen said. “In particular, with regard to our neighbour to the south, we are among the weak.”