Can a country change continents? Canada seems set to try.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced an intention to seek some novel form of associate membership in the European Union. It’s no mere flight of fancy, either, as Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU Commission, has already endorsed the idea.

It’s a proposal that manages to be both absurd and eminently logical, depending on how you frame it. Geographically, Canada remains firmly affixed to North America, sharing a border with its increasingly unpredictable neighbour to the south, the United States.

In other important ways, however, Canada clearly has much more in common in recent months with European countries than the unstable U.S. That’s because in the space of a year, America has gone from Canada’s most important friend and ally on the world stage to the clearest threat to Canadian sovereignty.

By deepening links with other European democracies, Carney clearly hopes to buy Canada a degree of insurance against continuing American intervention and hostility from U.S. President Donald Trump. There’s a logic to the argument.

Read more: Trump’s geopolitical aims, not economics, are behind his trade hostility towards Canada

Middle powers coming together

In fact, in many ways this proposal is very much in keeping with Canada’s multilateral approach to international politics since the Cold War era. This is a history Carney clearly invoked when he spoke about the need for middle powers to forge their own path together in his landmark speech to Davos earlier in the year.

Canada, then as now, is not a match for the greatest powers in the world. But working with other like-minded states, it can find ways to defend........

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