Once, at the Foreign Press Club in Tokyo, during a discussion on Canada’s foreign policy, a Montreal journalist began his talk with a succinct statement: “There are three countries that are important for Canada: the United States, the United States, and the United States.” This reality is well understood and accepted by most Canadians.
The border between the two countries has remained peaceful for over two centuries. However, with the election of Donald Trump, who has now described this peaceful border as “an artificially drawn line”, Canada is faced with not only his promise to impose new tariffs but also his threat to annex the northern neighbour altogether.
As Canada struggles with the very real threat of acrimonious relations with its long-standing partner, we may pause to closely examine the tragic outcome of a similar example of such close ties; the relationship between Russia and the Ukraine. There are important parallels between these two situations. While Canada possesses the largest land mass in the Americas, the Ukraine is the largest country in Europe east of Russia. But both are also neighbors to more powerful, more populous, and nuclear-armed entities: the United States and the Russian Federation,
As with Canada and the USA, both the Ukraine and Russia also belonged to the same political entity, the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union, for several centuries—far longer than Canada and the United States. Millions of Russians and Ukrainians are married to each other, many share the same language, and have watched the same films and TV programs for decades. Most Russians and Ukrainians were part of the same Soviet cultural space, with writers and performers from Ukraine, such as Mikhail Bulgakov and Mark Bernes, becoming cultural icons across the Soviet Union. Moreover, the volume of economic relations between Russia and the Ukraine was the highest in the former Soviet bloc.
Similarly, Canada’s trade relationship with the United States is the largest such bilateral trade in the world. The two countries are also connected by myriad personal, familial, cultural, linguistic, and other affinities. Several prominent cultural figures in the United States, such as Céline Dion, are Canadian. Canada and the United States once belonged to the same political entity, British North America, before the American Revolution of 1776 divided the two, with those loyal to the British crown joining partnership with ‘les Canadiens’ (French Canadians) and eventually evolving into the country of Canada.
Immediately after the recent election south of the border, and following up on the imperialistic comments by Trump, a group of ministers was established in Ottawa to manage relations with the new U.S. administration. The Prime Minister made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago and was duly humiliated by the president-elect, who suggested Trudeau would make a good governor for the future 51st American state of Canada. He was followed to Florida by Canada’s Foreign Minister and several other dignitaries. Scores of federal, provincial, and even municipal officials expressed concern about the new tariffs threatened by Trump. How to placate Washington and ensure Canada’s economic interests has been the central question debated across the country since early November. While not every Canadian likes the United States, all are concerned about relations with the giant to the south.
This reveals an apparent paradox in Canadian foreign policy. Canada does everything to maintain its relations with the United States, yet it has been at the forefront of efforts to turn the Ukraine against Russia. Canada’s policy in Ukraine can thus be summarized by the dictum: “Do as I say, not as I do.” What accounts for this paradox?
Primarily, geopolitics. Canada has historically been loyal first to Britain and, after the Second World War, to the United States. This loyalty explains why Canada accepted thousands of former Nazis from Ukraine in the early 1950s. Fiercely anti-Russian, these Ukrainians became a useful tool in the Cold War waged by the United States against the Soviet Union. They produced propaganda material smuggled into the USSR and, up to the 1950s, aided underground terrorist groups in Western Ukraine.
These Ukrainian immigrants enjoyed the support of the Canadian establishment and soon displaced the previously socialist-leaning Ukrainian diaspora in the country. Some former SS members became prominent in politics and academia. Nationalist summer camps, Sunday schools, and periodicals kept the flame of ethnic Ukrainian nationalism alive for new generations. Among them was Chrystia Freeland, whose grandfather was admitted to Canada after editing a pro-Nazi Ukrainian newspaper in German-occupied Kraków. The standing ovation given to a Ukrainian SS veteran in the Canadian parliament in September 2023 was an attempt to whitewash the Nazi past of that generation, presenting them as “freedom fighters against Russia.” This attempt backfired, but the complicity of Canadian power circles in protecting Ukrainian Nazis was once again highlighted, with a recent decision to keep the identities of these individuals under wraps.
The anti-Russian ethnic nationalism fomented in parts of the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada was exported to the Ukraine via NGOs, educational programs, and volunteers. One such volunteer, Freeland, who would later become Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister, was appalled by the lack of nationalist sentiment in the Ukraine when she visited during the heyday of Soviet glasnost. Since then, decades of consistent efforts to detach Ukraine from Russia have borne fruit, fuelling hostility against Russian-speaking Ukrainians, which served as a casus belli for a war between the two neighbors. But even before the war, Canadian military were training Ukrainian troops, including its neo-Nazi battalions.
Canada’s Ukraine policy is part of the country’s political tradition to follow the “master’s voice”—in this case, the geopolitical goal of the United States to weaken and undermine Russia. This policy has contributed to the suffering and death of millions of Ukrainians. While Canada has learned how to live peacefully next to an «elephant,» it not only failed to share this valuable experience with the newly independent Ukraine, but instead prodded it to become a battering ram against its formidable neighbour.
