On Sovereignty

We are not a small or weak nation. But we need to act like a country.

At its core, sovereignty is not symbolism. It is not a flag, and it is not a shared love of hockey.

It is capacity. It is the ability of a democratic people to make common cause and take collective action – economically, politically, culturally and institutionally.

In Canada today, national sovereignty is formally intact but practically weakened – less by foreign actions than by domestic drift. We remain a sovereign country, but our collective ability to act as one has thinned. This erosion has not occurred because Canadians rejected sovereignty, but because we stopped teaching ourselves what that is and what it requires.

Sovereignty as a shared project

Canadian sovereignty is not centralized in the way of a unitary state, nor fractured in the way of a loose confederation. It rests on a balance: federal authority, provincial autonomy, Indigenous self-determination, and democratic legitimacy. This balance was meant to allow a diverse people to coexist with individual, shared, and common purposes.

But over time, national purpose has taken a back seat to both global and provincial priority.

Globally, post-war cooperation gave way to interdependence which gave way to dependence. Pushing comparative advantage to its limits created short term economic benefit but left us exposed and less able to act independently as a nation.

Meanwhile, provinces became more assertive about their own autonomy while growing less attentive to the collective project. Jurisdiction has increasingly been treated not as a tool for self-government, but as a line of defense.

This is not an argument against provincial power. Provincial governments are closer to citizens. They reflect regional realities. They are essential to Canadian democracy. But sovereignty does not reside in provinces acting alone. No province, however large or resource-rich, can be sovereign in a meaningful sense on its own. Sovereignty exists when a people can act collectively and freely in the world – where they can have and assert capacity. For Canadians, that power exists when we work together, at the national level.

When provincial autonomy becomes detached from common purpose, it does not, over the long term, strengthen provincial interests. It weakens the shared shield that protects all provinces.

The drift towards provincialism

Over the past several decades, there has been a marked shift in Canadian federalism from collaboration to competition. Today, it is almost impossible to imagine nation building (and national projects) at the scale we saw in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

Provinces increasingly define success not in terms of national outcomes, but in terms of relative advantage – over other provinces, or over the federal government itself. Projects that require scale (energy corridors, climate action, interprovincial infrastructure, common regulatory frameworks, to name a few) stall not because they lack economic or public merit, but because the benefit versus risk equation breaks down when we consider the pros and cons on an atomic level. Delay becomes safer than decision, and jurisdiction becomes a veto rather than a vehicle for action.

Each province seeks maximum freedom of action, yet collectively Canadians lose the freedom on the world stage that a strong federal government provides. We fragment regulatory regimes, duplicate effort, and weaken our bargaining position abroad.

The result is a country that sometimes behaves less like a single sovereign actor and more like a collection of adjacent administrations.

This drift is not ideological. It is structural and cultural. Premiers are rewarded by voters for defending jurisdiction, not for strengthening the federation. National outcomes are treated as abstractions, while provincial wins are tangible and immediate. Over time, the habit of thinking nationally atrophies.

A passive national government

It would be incomplete – and self-serving – to place this drift at the feet of provinces. The federal government has not been a neutral bystander in the weakening of national capacity.

At times, Ottawa has traded coherence for quiet, accepting fragmentation as the price of short-term stability. At times, it has deferred difficult national conversations in favour of transactional federalism: managing disputes rather than resolving them, accommodating fragmentation rather than challenging it.

In some cases, the federal government has reinforced the very dynamics it now confronts – designing programs that respect jurisdictional sensitivities but fail to build durable and coherent national systems; tolerating regulatory patchworks rather than insisting on interoperability; retreating from leadership when leadership carried political risk.

Sovereignty in a federal system cannot be strengthened by a national government that behaves as though coordination is optional. Federal authority exists not to dominate provinces, but to do what provinces and citizens cannot do alone, and what provinces and citizens can do better together. When that role is underplayed, capacity erodes.

Sovereignty requires federal leadership that articulates national objectives clearly, accepts political risk, and treats coordination and national policy not as intrusion but as core responsibility.

Federalism without a national story

Part of the problem is narrative. Canada has become comfortable talking about what provinces are owed, but less comfortable talking about what the country requires. We debate fiscal arrangements, jurisdictional boundaries, and constitutional limits with great sophistication – but often without reference to a shared national objective.

A national government cannot hope to function without a national story. Without one, a nation’s government will instead default to whatever factional purpose has numeric advantage at any given time, which only breeds division and resentment. When we treat any national ambition or action as unwelcome, unity suffers. Canadians suffer. Capacity suffers.

That capacity matters. This is especially evident in moments of crisis, such as the one we find ourselves in today. During emergencies, Canadians expect national action. They expect borders to matter, supply chains to function, and institutions to respond. Yet once the crisis passes, we often revert to fragmentation, treating coordination as an exception, or a wartime measure, rather than a norm.

A sovereign country cannot afford to relearn how to act collectively every time circumstances demand it. The capacity must be permanent.

Indigenous sovereignty and national strength

Serious discussion of Canadian sovereignty must also reckon with Indigenous sovereignty. Indigenous self-determination is not a concession from the state; it is a foundational reality that predates it.

For a long time, this relationship was framed as a zero-sum conflict between competing sovereignties. But sovereignty in Canada is and always has been layered. It is strengthened, not weakened, when governance and benefit is shared with those who have enduring ties to the land and responsibility for its stewardship.

A Canada that cannot reconcile its own internal sovereignties will struggle to assert itself externally. Justice and capacity are linked. Legitimacy is a form of sovereign power.

Strengthening Canadian sovereignty

The erosion of sovereignty did not occur because Canadians rejected it. It occurred because we stopped naming it as a value. Sovereignty has been treated as settled – the result of acts of British Parliaments long ago. It has been treated as something inherited rather than maintained.

Strengthening a sense of Canadian sovereignty is a civic task. It means restoring an understanding that self-government requires effort, coordination, and sometimes restraint. It requires citizens to see themselves not only as residents of provinces, but as participants in a national project.

We should be able to speak plainly about national interest. Not in opposition to global cooperation, but in recognition that such cooperation is meaningful only when participants bring real capacity to the table, and only when participants have real ability to say yes or no. It is collectively, as Canadians, not as residents of provinces or as individuals, that we find that capacity.

It also requires renewing respect for institutions that operate at scale: national infrastructure, national regulation, national data, national standards. These are not threats to local identity. They are the instruments through which a diverse country acts as one.

There is also a deeper habit we must unlearn. We often treat government as something that happens to us – remote, abstract, and external to our own choices.

But Canada is a democracy. The government is not a force imposed from afar. It is the mechanism through which we act together to accomplish things we cannot accomplish apart.

Sovereignty requires participation, not just begrudging consent. It asks citizens to think beyond immediate jurisdictional loyalties and to hold politicians – federal and provincial alike – accountable for collective outcomes. It requires patience for coordination and an understanding that scale, common interest and compromise can be a source of strength and a source of freedom.

This is how sovereignty is sustained in practice: when citizens expect national standards to function and national infrastructure to endure. When they demand national effectiveness, not just provincial advantage.

Without that civic expectation, even the best-designed systems will fail.

Sovereignty as responsibility

Ultimately, sovereignty is about responsibility: the responsibility to make choices, to bear their consequences, and to shape the future rather than inheriting it or being subjected to it.

Canada today faces a choice. We can choose to practice sovereignty deliberately: fostering national purpose, strengthening internal cooperation, and rebuilding the capacity to act collectively as Canadians. Or we can find ourselves fragmented, in a world that has never seemed more dangerous to be the small fish or the uncoordinated nation.

To be sovereign is not merely to exist as a country. It is to behave like one.

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