Were Canadian Elections Existential in the Context of US-Canada Tensions? (Part 1)

Trump and Carney, May 6, 2025 -- public domain image

By P. Ambedkar and Arnold August

Editor’s Note: This interview is part one of two and was edited for length, clarity, and style.

There was a lot of talk in the media about Trump’s desire to annex Canada and make it the fifty-first state of the United States. Even the 2025 Canadian elections were fought on this line. Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resigned and appointed Mark Carney as his successor. Even though many say that Canada is inherently opposed to the United States’ big brother attitude, the ruling elites are hand in glove with the US.

To learn more about this, P. Ambedkar of Tricontinental Institute for Social Research spoke with Arnold August, writer, political commentator, and analyst of the North American continent, on the mood of the people and what lies in store for Canada.

What Is the Political System in Canada? What Happened in the Recent Election?

The Canadian electoral system is similar to others in the British Commonwealth, such as India. First, it is based on the plurality in each riding, or the ‘first-past-the-post’; the winner takes all. Second, the party that garners the most seats is called up to propose its leader as Prime Minister, who forms her or his Cabinet. There is, however, a significant difference between India and many other parliamentary systems. Since the 1950 Constitution (after its Independence in 1947), India has been a Republic, and a ceremonial President replaced the Monarch and Governor-General. At the same time, Canada does not yet have even a ceremonial president. We are still stuck with the British monarchy. The head of state in ‘modern, First World’ Canada is the British Queen or King, today, King Charles. You may justifiably ask, does this anachronism ever raise its head in Canadian elections and its immediate aftermath?  Not often. However, in 2025, it did so to the extent not seen for many decades! Thus, I will relish the part in the interview when I share my thoughts, and those of others in Canada, with your readers on the unexpected turn of events. What occurred? The newly elected Prime Minister, Mark Carney, took the very unusual step of inviting King Charles to give the parliamentary Throne Speech in Ottawa on 27 May.

The results of the 28 April elections were finally published on 1 May. Elections Canada says more than 68% of eligible voters cast a ballot in the federal election – more than 19.5 million people. While this election was widely expected to see an increased turnout, it did not surpass the record set in March 1958, when 79.4% of eligible Canadians voted. However, this abstention rate of close to 4 of 10 potential voters (even though it is not the main argument against the ‘existential’ nature of the 2025 elections) is not part of the mainstream North American political and media narrative of a ‘pivotal’ election. The abstention is ignored to dovetail with the official fabricated ‘momentous’ account of the elections, tied to Canada defending its ‘sovereignty’ against Trump’s 51st-state desires.

That being said, Mark Carney, as the successor to Justin Trudeau and their Liberal Party, garnered 43.7% of the total vote and 168 out of the 343 seats in the parliament. Meanwhile, the other main party forming Canada’s de facto dictatorial duopoly, the Conservative Party, secured 41.3% of the vote and 144 seats.

What Is the Situation with the Bloc Québécois?

The Bloc Québécois (BQ) is a case apart, but it takes on significance today after the surprise announcement of the King’s visit to Ottawa.

This party presents candidates only in Quebec, not in the rest of Canada. The BQ’s expressed goal is to attain a sovereign Quebec nation and thus represents the nation in the Canadian parliament. Its historical roots are found in opposition to British colonialism, which defeated French colonial Quebec on the battlefield. In the elections, the BQ won twenty-three seats in Quebec alone, far more than in all of Canada, for the social democratic New Democratic Party (seven) and the Green Party, only one.

It is not because I am from Quebec that I highlight Quebec. Readers should be aware that it was the Conservative Party government that introduced legislation to recognise Quebec as a nation in 2006, albeit to stymy a proposed BQ motion in favour of Quebecois national recognition without reference to Canada. The Conservative government motion passed by a vast majority (only fifteen Liberal members of parliament and one independent voted against it) reads: ‘That this House recognise that the Quebecois form a nation within a united Canada’.

Some Say That Canada Is Not Sovereign and Is Already a De Facto 51st State? What Do You Have to Say?

Some current figures and official statements may lead us to this conclusion. However, according to experts, Canada’s deepening dependence on the U.S. has been a decades-long evolution. Currently, according to the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database on international trade, imports from the United States were USD $274.39 billion during 2024. Additionally, over 2.4 million jobs in Canada depend on business with the U.S.  Furthermore, as announced by Prime Minister Carney, significant expenditures in his party’s four-year plan include a pledge to increase existing defence spending by CAD $18 billion to meet the 2% US-led NATO spending target. Ironically, he dared to say with a poker face, ‘In a world of growing threats, Canada must be equipped to detect and deter those who would attack our sovereignty’. But wait, the CAD $18 billion sum may be more. Carney told reporters that day, ‘It is possible, we’ll need to do more’.

Compare this CAD $18 billion four-year ‘defence’ budget to housing expenditures, one of the concerns of Canadians, to the ‘about $3 billion annually over the next four years’. Even if he keeps his promise, the four-year housing plan is far less than the CAD $18 billion to support the US/NATO military pact. On 25 April 2024, homelessness was considered a growing problem, with at least 235,000 people in Canada experiencing homelessness each year.

This contradiction, spawned from Canadian tutelage to U.S. imperial interests, only scratches the surface. Another example is the lack of funding for mental health. This issue abruptly came onto the scene in Canada and internationally last April during the election campaign. The BBC reported, ‘Eleven people were killed after a suspected car-ramming attack in the Canadian city of Vancouver during the election campaign. The occasion was Lapu Lapu Day, a celebration of a Filipino national hero who fought against Spanish colonisation.’ Vancouver’s mayor, Ken Sim, said, ‘Mental health appears to be the underlying issue here’. Furthermore, the accused had no prior criminal record, according to court records and ‘was under the care of a mental health team and on “extended leave”’.

Yet, compared to the four years CAD $18 billion geared for NATO, mental health is allotted CAD $900 million for 2024–25. This translates to about CAD $1.5 billion over four years compared to CAD $18 billion for defence. Furthermore, since the beginning of 2022, Canada has committed CAD $4.5 billion in military assistance to NATO-backed Ukraine. This funding will allow Canada to deliver military aid to Ukraine through 2029. Canada pledged CAD $5 billion in seized Russian assets for Ukraine on the war anniversary. It was no wonder to many of us Canadians that in 2023, the Parliament in Ottawa became the laughingstock of the world when it gave an unanimous (all parties) standing ovation to Yaroslav Hunka who served in the 14th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division which functioned directly under the Nazi command. What more can be said to prove that Canada is not sovereign and is already a de facto 51st state?

Well, at least one government in the world, I am referring to a state led by a former bus driver. What did President Nicolas Maduro’s government have to say earlier this year in response to the Trudeau government’s usual pro-US slavish Venezuela policy by slapping more sanctions against Venezuela, designed to make the Venezuelan people suffer and therefore revolt against the Bolivarian government? While the ‘51st state’ controversy was in full swing, Caracas said Canada ‘has ceased to be a sovereign nation and has become the 51st state, without its voice and with a diplomacy dictated by the White House’. Caracas hit the nail on the head!

Furthermore, a Canadian retired professor and journalist, Michel Chossudovsky wrote in the article ‘Canada’s Sovereignty in Jeopardy: “51st State”, Déjà Vu: The Militarization of North America under President Donald Trump’ that ‘Following the creation of US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) in April 2002, defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced unilaterally (without consulting the government of Canada) that USNORTHCOM’s territorial jurisdiction (land, sea, air) extended from the Caribbean basin to the Canadian Arctic territories and the North Pole. What this means is that the U.S. gave itself the right to deploy its military by air, land, and sea throughout Canada, including its internal waterways and its territorial waters, in violation of the UN International Law of the Sea’.

End of Part I

Pindiga Ambedkar is a researcher with Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He works on issues of discrimination, labour, and education.

Arnold August, M.A. in Political Science from McGill University, is a Montreal-based author and journalist specialising in geopolitics and international relations, Global South, multipolarity, Russia-Ukraine-NATO, Palestine, Iran, Latin America, Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), Venezuela, Cuba, First Peoples, China, BRICS, West Asia and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). He is a member of the Canadian Freelance Union (CFU) of UNIFOR.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.