opinion

Premiers during the 2025 summer meetings of Canada’s Premiers at Deerhurst Resort in Huntsville, Ont., in July, 2025.

Scott Fairley is a senior partner in Cambridge LLP in Toronto and the author of Foreign Affairs in the Canadian Constitution.

Canada is in Washington’s crosshairs. The second Trump administration’s unpredictable waves of tariffs and annexationist rhetoric has challenged both our economy and national security. However, Canada’s underlying vulnerability may not be simply a mercurial president but our own wrongly perceived political and constitutional ambiguity about who speaks for Canada in meeting such external threats.

For nearly 75 years after Confederation, Canada was a self-governing dominion of the British Empire without sovereign status. Even after the S

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