Daniel Béland

March 24, 2025

After months of prime ministerial departure and succession drama, of bilateral chaos, avoidable economic uncertainty, and a spit-take reversal in the pre-campaign polling snapshot, the 2025 federal election is finally underway.

The campaign begins as support for the Liberals, who had trailed the Conservatives in the polls for more than a year, has surged, partly because of the departure of Justin Trudeau and the arrival of Mark Carney as Liberal leader, and partly because of the Trump effect, which has helped the Liberals and forced the Conservatives to suddenly alter their game plan, with some difficulty.

Instead of focusing primarily on the carbon tax and cost-of-living issues as Conservatives had initially anticipated, the 37-day campaign — the shortest allowable in the Elections Canada 37-51 day limit — will be largely centred on Canada-U.S. relations and, especially, on how to make our economy more resilient amid an ongoing trade war with the United States. Between the economic context and Donald Trump’s talk of Canada becoming the 51st state, this campaign will also have a patriotic tone, as party leaders will have to explain how they can protect Canada’s sovereignty and identity in a new continental environment in which the Trump administration is treating Canada as an adversary rather than a close and reliable ally.

International affairs, including Canada-U.S. relations, are seldom front-and-centre in contemporary federal campaigns. Under most circumstances, partly because voters care primarily about domestic matters, recent federal campaigns have been mainly about fiscal and social policy issues. It was certainly the case with the last three federal campaigns, in which foreign policy only played a limited role (with the exception of Canada’s withdrawal from Afghanistan towards the beginning of the 2021 campaign), as political attention focused mainly on things like the size of the federal deficit as well as the possible expansion of federal social programs and transfers to the provinces and territories. During the current campaign, social policy is unlikely to receive as much attention as in the recent past, as trade, economic development, and Canada’s sovereignty and identity are at the forefront of the political agenda and, therefore, of electoral competition.

To find a federal campaign in which all these themes proved so crucial, we have to go back to 1988, which witnessed an “existential election” similar to this year’s in key ways. In 1988, the ballot question was whether the recent Canada-U.S. free trade agreement signed early that year by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and President Ronald Reagan should be fully ratified and implemented. In that case, there were two clear camps: the Progressive Conservatives supported the agreement, arguing it would be highly beneficial to Canada’s economy; John Turner’s Liberals and Ed Broadbent’s New Democratic Party (NDP) strongly opposed the agreement, saying it would be bad for workers while threatening Canadian identity, resources, and sovereignty.

The allegedly negative correlation between free trade and national identity was ever-present in Liberal discourse during the campaign. For instance, one Liberal campaign ad suggested that the free trade agreement would symbolically erase the border between Canada and the United States and force us to give away “our water, our health care, our culture”. More dramatically, during a televised debate, Turner attacked Mulroney saying that the free trade agreement would reduce Canada “to a colony of the United States, because when the economic levers go, the political independence is sure to follow.” In this context, the debate about free trade became a debate about Canada’s national identity and sovereignty.

No-one could have anticipated in 1988 that the United States would one day have a president who would not only act against Canada’s economic interests but against America’s in service to a larger agenda of anti-democratic geopolitical change.

In the end, we know that Mulroney and his party won the 1988 electoral battle and returned to parliament with a reduced yet significant majority. Yet, the 1988 debate over free trade has not been forgotten, as excerpts from the televised confrontation between Mulroney and Turner have been shared on social media. In fact, one of my former McGill students wrote to me recently about these famous exchanges, asking whether I thought that Turner was “right” about free trade. I answered that, in contrast to what Turner said in 1988, free trade and the preservation of national identity are compatible but that, in light of the behaviour of the Trump administration, although free trade does have clear economic benefits for both countries, the asymmetrical power relations between Canada and the United States that are on full display under Trump should give us pause and lead us to rethink our trade and security relationships, with one another and with the rest of the world.

No-one could have anticipated in 1988 that the United States would one day have a president who would not only act against Canada’s economic interests but against America’s in service to a larger agenda of anti-democratic geopolitical change. Even less predictable back then was the notion that such an assault could be fronted by Donald Trump. In 1988, Trump was mostly focused on his Atlantic City casinos, which would all face bankruptcy within five years. According to long-time Clinton advisor and pollster Doug Schoen, Trump did commission a poll testing the presidential waters in 1988, but the results that a Trump presidency was “very unlikely” and the 15-20 per cent favourability were prohibitive. By the mid-2000s, Trump’s career as a reality-show host had refreshed his public persona and boosted his name recognition.

Certainly, the current tensions between Canada and the United States under President Trump reinforce something that we already knew: our country is overly dependent on the United States, economically but also militarily. Yet, this realization is not pushing us toward protectionism and isolationism, as the quest to diversify our trade partnerships and to reinforce our commitment to NATO and multilateral security alliances is pushing us in the opposite direction.

Today, as opposed to the situation prevailing in 1988, both the Conservatives and the Liberals fully embrace free trade while supporting the idea of making Canada less dependent on the United States. This is the case because Canada and the world have changed dramatically since 1988. At the same time, the actions and rhetoric of President Trump have amplified the notion that Canada is vulnerable vis-à-vis the United States, a country much more populous and powerful than ours, with which we share the longest international land border in the world.

Over the next few weeks, these asymmetrical power shifts between Canada and the United States will inform debates about how we can best deal with the Trump menace and make Canada less reliant, both economically and militarily, on its besieged neighbour. There is no silver bullet here and the current situation requires political courage and a thoughtful discussion of the trade-offs at hand when considering things like trade diversification and increased military spending.

Clearly, in strong contrast to most recent campaigns but as in 1988, the current campaign will focus on the broader economic and political future of Canada, making it our second existential election in fewer than four decades.

Daniel Béland is professor of political science and director (on leave) of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University.