Pete Hegseth took time out from the chaos of the Iran war to make an announcement: Donald Trump has renamed the region from Mexico to Greenland as “Greater North America.”
It drew ridicule and jokes online (“I’ve stepped through puddles that are deeper than Hegseth, opined one). But there is strategic significance in the Hegseth statement. As ridiculous as it seems the latest boast is part of a long and sustained psyops campaign to undermine our nation, ridicule our independence and treat our elected leader as a vassal of the Washington regime.
It was the same strategy employed by Russia in Ukraine prior to the February 2022 invasion. Trump claimed that Ukraine was just part of Greater Russia. He belittled the Ukrainian culture and sovereignty. Nobody took Putin seriously then. They thought it was Putin being Putin. We have learned otherwise.
It is the same with Trump’s claim that Canada is part of his “Greater North America.”
Writing in The Walrus, Patrick Lennox, argues in the article “Canada Is Already at War with the US—We Just Don’t Know It Yet” that wars don’t start with bombs. It begins with the ever-increasing levels of psychological warfare and destabilization.
The United States has been systematically targeting our key industries, engaging in constant psyops and working with the Donbas-style separatist front group. But Lennox also notes that the Canadian security, political, and bureaucratic apparatus naively believe that this is just an aberration. Trump being Trump. That despite all the bombast the “special relationship” between Canada and the United States will remain.
This, despite the fact that since Trump first started threatening Canada he has never wavered in his message.
If one looks at the political debates in legislatures or nightly discussions on the news panels, the seriousness of the Trump threat is rarely top of mind. But ordinary Canadians understand the threat.
As soon as Trump began insulting and threatening Canada at the beginning of 2025, polling questions on Canada-US relations took a dramatic shift. For years, Canadians expressed only mild displeasure at their larger neighbour.
Relations were good. We didn’t look over our shoulder.
But by the beginning of 2025, the poll numbers had shifted dramatically, with only 30% of Canadians believing the United States could be trusted as an ally. Nearly the same percentage of Canadians considered the United States an enemy state.
Over the course of the year, those numbers became even starker.
In early 2026, a polling firm found that 57.9% of Canadians believed that an American invasion of Canada was likely.¹
Canadians are thinking through what an invasion would mean.
Many people stop me on the street to tell me they are getting their gun license. That they are willing to do whatever they have to stop the takeover. It’s not boastfulness. It is people expressing their fear and determination to protect the land they call home.
I keep thinking of Ukraine. I think of the photos of those big, beautiful cities and the modern economy that had been there prior to 2022. I think of the terror bombing, the winters of relentless cold and destroyed power grids, the never-ending death coming from the skies.
Our shared roots run deep.
Canada is home to the largest Ukrainian diaspora in the world. For the longest time, we didn’t think much about it: perogies at lunch, the onion dome church steeples over northern and western towns.
But today, the fates of Ukraine and Canada are tied together in a much more ominous way.
Canada (alongside Gaza and Greenland) is a nation that Donald Trump believes can be erased from history.
His threat against Canada first came in a hate-filled Christmas Day rant in 2024. And then, on January 6, 2025, he declared his determination to destroy our economy and force us to give up our national sovereignty.
The vitriol and menace came out of the blue for Canadians who had long been told by our political leaders not to take the bluster of Trump seriously. In America, cooler heads always prevail. Right?
But then it became clear this wasn’t just banter. Trump was serious. Initially, the only thing that gave him pause was the clear message in early 2025 from then Prime Minister Trudeau that we would inflict maximum economic harm on the United States if they attempted to bring us to our knees.
Donald wanted an empire, but he didn’t have the backbone to force it. Not then.
But he has been using his political and military muscle to intimidate ever since.
We are in a similar situation to what existed in Ukraine prior to Putin’s invasion of 2022. At the time, few believed the threats emanating from the Kremlin were serious. After all, this was the 21st century. There was still the rule of international law.
Bob Woodward’s excellent book War tells the inside story of the Biden administration attempt to wake Europe and Ukraine up to the fact that the threat to destroy Ukraine wasn’t just talk. It was deadly serious.
When the invasion was launched, few thought Ukraine would survive past the first week. Vladimir Putin launched a massive armour thrust at Kyiv, backed up by horrific bombing.
President Zelenskyy, a former TV comedian, was expected to flee the country amid the Russian advance. When the United States embassy offered to get him out of the country, he responded:
“I need ammunition, not a ride.”
It was ordinary citizens in Bakmach and Koryukivka who defied Russian tanks with their bodies. They slowed and then stopped the advance on Kyiv. Those people were no different from the people I met in Oshawa, Victoria, or St. John’s who assured me they would do whatever it takes to derail an American invasion.
Despite the heroism of the people of Ukraine, the war has resulted in an unmitigated humanitarian disaster.
Russia’s war crimes - torture, kidnapping of children, and targeting of civilian infrastructure - have brought Europe back to the darkest days of the Second World War.
Ukraine is exhausted. It needs its allies more than ever. And yet, instead of solidarity, Donald Trump has sided with Putin in a dark plan to divide up the world.
Is Trump simply a gangster kissing the ring of a superior gangster?
Is he a Kremlin stooge?
Is he a traitor to his own nation?
All of the above.
If Ukraine falls, Western European democracy falls. The Europeans are scrambling. They thought they could count on the United States. They now know otherwise. Perhaps the one positive from Trump’s disastrous invasion of Iran is that it has delivered a stark message to Europe that the real threat to the world at this time is the United States of America.
Simon Tisdall writing in the Guardian states, “Know your enemy is the first lesson of war - and Britain’s enemy is now Donald Trump.”
This is a lesson that ordinary Canadians have known for well over a year. Trump continues to taunt us and belittle our nation in the same way that Putin ridiculed Ukraine prior to the invasion.
Canadians are like Ukrainians in many ways. When pushed to the wall, we have spines of steel. When forced to choose between Vimy or Vichy, I know where ordinary Canadians will be. There is no return to normal.
Canada’s future is tied with Ukraine. If Putin is allowed to win, Trump may be willing to try his luck bombing our cities and trying to terrify our civilians.
I will end with a quote from Serhii Plokhy in his book The Russo-Ukrainian War:
“History is now back with a vengeance, displaying its worst features and opening its most fearsome pages, filled with scenes of violence and destruction… we do not know what the war’s [eventual] end will bring. But it is quite clear that the future of the world in which our children and our grandchildren will be living in, depends greatly on its outcome.”
Thank you for reading Charlie Angus / The Resistance. If you’d like to upgrade to a paid subscription your support will help keep this project independent and sustainable. I’m grateful to have you here - thank you for your support.
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