Why This Canada Day Demands More of Us

The Inheritance We Are Being Asked to Defend

Canada Day is usually about the fireworks, the flag, the day off, and the backyard BBQs.

But this year is different. This Canada Day is asking something more of us.

A year ago, the pressures on this country were just starting to take shape. Today, they are at our doorstep. We are currently facing a quiet convergence of threats designed to do one thing: strip Canada of its capacity to decide its own future.

To understand the actual condition of the country whose anniversary we are marking today, we have to look plainly at three distinct fronts.

The Economic Squeeze

The United States, our largest trading partner and closest ally for eight decades, is engaged in an economic war against us. Tariffs on steel, aluminum, and copper remain in force, a new import surcharge replaced the ones the courts struck down, and Washington has threatened a 100 percent tariff if Canada finalizes a trade deal with China. Even CUSMA is being used as a tool of coercion. This is the deliberate use of economic leverage by a neighbour against a country it used to call a partner.

The Information War

At the same time, Alberta has become the live test case for a different kind of war, fought over information rather than goods. A referendum on separation is headed to the October ballot. Researchers at DisinfoWatch, the Canadian Digital Media Research Network, and allied institutions have documented Russian-aligned networks and American political operatives amplifying Alberta’s separatist movement, alongside a leaked voter database covering nearly three million Albertans. CSIS Director Daniel Rogers has confirmed publicly that the referendum process is vulnerable to foreign interference. A yes vote is not required for the interference to succeed.

The Fracturing Alliance

The war in Ukraine is also entering a phase that concerns Canada directly, not just Europe. This week, the Dutch defence ministry’s annual strategy assessment warned that Russia could be capable of a limited military campaign against a NATO member within one year of the fighting in Ukraine ending, intended to fracture the alliance rather than defeat it outright. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has separately estimated Russia could be ready to use force against the alliance within five years. The timelines differ, but several Western intelligence services now agree on the underlying assessment: Russia is preparing for confrontation with NATO once Ukraine is no longer absorbing its army. Canada is a NATO member, with a direct stake in that preparation.

What is At Risk?

Three different fronts are pressing on the same target: Canada’s capacity to decide its own future. An economically weakened Canada has less room to invest in defence. A country distracted by a manufactured unity crisis has less attention for economic diversification. A Canada seen internationally as divided and exposed is a less credible NATO partner at the exact moment allied planners are recalculating what Russia might attempt next. These pressures compound each other, and on the available evidence, they are likely to intensify before they ease. This is the actual condition of the country whose anniversary we are marking today.

Our True Identity

Here in the maritimes, we are made up of many peoples who have called this place home: First Nations, Acadians, Irish, German, British, and Dutch settlers, Loyalists who arrived after the American Revolution, and newer immigrants who brought their own languages, memories, and hopes with them. New Brunswick has two official languages, and many more spoken around kitchen tables, in workplaces, and in schools. That diversity holds together because of something larger than any single origin or language. We are maritimers, and we are Canadians.

The same is true at the national scale. Canada is genuinely diverse, by origin, language, faith, and region. What makes the country function is a higher identity that sits above those differences without erasing them: humane, tolerant, accepting of people who arrived by very different routes, and strong and resilient enough to hold disagreement without fracturing.

That identity was not handed to any generation finished. It was built by people who differed in language, faith, and origin choosing, repeatedly, to remain part of the same country. It survives only because each generation renews that choice.

An economic war, a disinformation campaign aimed at dividing Alberta from the rest of the country, and a Russian military posture that treats Western unity as a target are aimed, in the end, at the same question: are we willing to do what is necessary to defend and protect our nation?

We have lived for so long beside the machinery of stability that we mistake it for inevitability. We assume peace will continue because it has continued. We assume institutions will hold because they held yesterday. We assume our alliances will protect us, our geography will shelter us, our neighbours will remain predictable, our adversaries will remain distant, and our own divisions will remain manageable.

If the next generation is going to inherit a Canada that we love, a Canada that is still humane, tolerant, accepting, strong, and resilient, that choice has to be renewed again, by this generation, deliberately. Defending Canada is more than a belief. It means taking economic sovereignty seriously, refusing to let Alberta’s legitimate grievances be hijacked by foreign actors, and treating our alliances and our own defence as a responsibility. Sometimes taking responsibility for our collective future means willing to take personal responsibility.

The Vanguard of the Choice

Thankfully, that willingness already exists. We see it clearly in the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces. They are the ones who have stood up and said, in effect, that this country is worthy of the sacrifice of their present for our collective future.

They train for contingencies most Canadians hope never to see, they deploy on operations far from home, and they and their families carry the ordinary costs of that service quietly, year after year, whether or not the rest of the country is paying attention.

They miss birthdays, anniversaries, first steps, last goodbyes, ordinary suppers, school concerts, and the daily texture of family life. They train in discomfort. They live with uncertainty. They know that orders may one day require courage of a kind most civilians are spared from testing in themselves.

This year this Canada Day piece is dedicated to them: to the members of the Canadian Armed Forces serving today, and to those who served before them, whose choice to defend and protect this country is the reason the rest of us still have a country worth arguing about. And as we face hostilities and challenges not seen in generations, they will be part of the reason we will have a Canada to pass on to future generations.

So this Canada Day, let us celebrate our very good luck to belong here. Let us acknowledge what is asked of us now to protect and defend our sovereignty. And let us remember those who have already chosen to take on the personal responsibility of protecting what we have.

To Canada, to our Canada, may she remain strong and free! 🇨🇦