US President Donald Trump has destroyed quite a few Canadian illusions about the bilateral relationship in his 18 months in power. Perhaps the biggest was that Canada and the United States were actual friends and not just neighbours with temporarily aligned interests. Another was that Canadians could remain aloof and relatively untouched by whatever chaos he stirred up south of the border. He put paid to that with his direct attacks on Canada’s sovereignty through his talk of it becoming the 51st state and on Canada’s economy through his capricious application of punitive tariffs. Taking a lead from their boss, administration officials are meddling in the destabilizing Alberta separatism debate.

This is not the first time Americans have tried to influence how Canadians are governed. In 1774, delegates to the Continental Congress used spies, propaganda, and local sympathizers to persuade the inhabitants of Canada they should reject British rule and become the 14th colony. When that failed to produce the desired result, they invaded. There are lessons from that 250-year-old failure that could prove useful in fending off the latest assault.

The American Parallel

American actions then and now do not all fit neatly into the definition of foreign influence used by policymakers in the current debate. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Public Safety Canada, and the 2025 report of the Public Inquiry Into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions all emphasize covert or illegal activities when they define foreign influence or interference. Yet according to a recent report into foreign interference in the Alberta referendum campaign, American involvement is “overt, escalating and converging at multiple levels.” The 1774 efforts were a mix of overt and covert, to use the current terminology.

There was nothing clandestine about the letter the Continental Congress wrote to the “Inhabitants of the Province of Quebec” in October 1774, inviting them to unite with the 13 Colonies to resist so-called British tyranny. 

Their promise to allow the continued practice of Roman Catholicism was disingenuous, given they harshly criticized it as “a religion that has deluged your island in blood and spread impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder, and rebellion throughout every part of the world” in a separate letter to the British people sent around the same time. They did describe the system of governance used in the American colonies and suggested the French Canadians,........

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