Mark Carney meets with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Photo by Photo by Daniel Torok/White House/Flickr.

As the potential for a new trade deal with the United States intensifies, Canadians need to make their voices heard loud and clear to ensure our country retains meaningful independence.

Media reports on both sides of the border have revealed an American list of demands in ongoing trade negotiations framed by Donald Trump’s latest tariff threat, this time a 50 percent levy on a range of goods, with no exception for CUSMA-compliant products, scheduled to come into effect Wednesday.

These core American demands—first right of refusal on our country’s critical minerals, guaranteed access to our oil and gas resources, participation in Trump’s “golden dome” missile defence scheme and completion of the US F-35s purchase, along with changes to our supply management system for dairy, the dropping of retaliatory tariffs, and putting US alcohol back on provincial liquor store shelves—amount to more than just capitulation in negotiations. This is a pathway to the abdication of Canadian sovereignty.

Whatever the promised return in a deal—and very little is the widely presumed expectation—under such a scenario, our country would not only become a subservient vassal state to America, we would essentially be the 51st state without voting privileges. It is an outcome notable Canadian political scientists, including countless contributors to this magazine, have tried to warn us about.

Canadians—particularly progressive Liberal partisans—convinced that Prime Minister Mark Carney and his government would not submit to such a deal need to do less deferring and more demanding.

Multiple policy concessions to appease America’s evolving trade and political demands have already been granted, from abandoning the digital services tax to dropping some retaliatory tariffs, weakening provisions under the Online Streaming Act to........

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