Meeting the U.S. Challenge will Require Democratic Solidarity

The Canada-U.S. border at Windsor, on the Detroit River

Donald Trump hasn’t even taken power and already the pressures on Canada’s democracy have cracked the surface.

The immediate debate is over tariffs, but the more profound shocks will come from the fundamentally different political system U.S. voters have embraced.

Authoritarianism works by declaring a portion of the population a threat to the nation, then justifies the concentration of power to combat them, unconstrained by the rule of law.  Any one who resists repression of this group is an “enemy within.”

It’s happening in plain sight now south of the border. Undocumented Americans and more recent migrants are the new targets, threatened with mass detention as the administration attempts to expel one million per year. Any shortfall of this unattainable goal will provide an excuse to prosecute journalists, fire civil servants, and go after political opponents.

We have not yet heard Canadian politicians speak of an “invasion” of “rapists” from “s***hole countries.”  But when President-elect Trump threatened tariffs if Canada’s doesn’t crack down on migrants seeking to leave our country, the only debate between our parties was over how many resources to put into the crackdown.

In our national political debate, we increasingly refer to migrants as threats. We have drawn down our immigration targets so far down that our population may begin to shrink, and with it our long-term economic prospects. As Canada scrambles to escape the economic shock of U.S. antagonism, we risk missing the bigger story. 

After January 21, we will no longer share a border with a liberal democracy.  Our security and economic interests are bound up with a country that does not share our system of government.

The pressure our country will face to adopt authoritarian politics will come from many sources – anxiety over our economy, exasperation at divisions within our own society, and the opportunism of politicians exploring a rival path to power, for starters. Canadians will be divided, and the competition for our future will not simply be between politicians but between political systems.

With authoritarians in control of all branches of the U.S. government, how long can liberal democracy hold out in Canada?

The answer may be to us, as citizens. Which norms prevail in Canadian society depend on those of us who make up our society.

In the Remembering Project, we have seen how past failures to uphold our country’s norms damaged tens of thousands of children. 

We have seen what happens when a country subordinates one group of people and deprives them of the rights others enjoy. Residential schools weakened Canada, creating social problems we wrestle with to this day.

But we have also seen how citizens can step up and take responsibility, reasserting the norms that we want to define Canada. Volunteers have travelled hundreds of kilometers to visit these sites to offer their help to survivors. Non-Indigenous Canadians have stepped up to take responsibility for what other non-Indigenous Canadians did.

In other words, we have modelled the norms that should define Canada.

Now it is time for expand the Circle for Democratic Solidarity to other challenges facing Canadian democracy.  We will continue to mobilize non-Indigenous Canadians to help address the legacy of residential schools. From January 21 on, we will also offer opportunities for Canadians to model the norms of inclusive democracy on issues raised by the U.S. embrace of authoritarianism.

Look out for the events we will be organizing on U.S. authoritarianism and the implications for Canada’s democracy. Each one will feature concrete steps everyday citizens can take to model the values we want to define our country.

The norms that define Canadian democracy are under growing pressure. As economic anxieties grow, some Canadians will question our commitment to equality, to the universal application of human rights, to pluralism, to the rule of law. They will ask if we can afford to uphold values not shared by the U.S. government.

But as the U.S. steers toward an authoritarian system of government, we can carve our own path – including with the steps we take as citizens.

• Ben Rowswell