In Thanksgiving 2025, Canadians should be grateful that this country’s political culture appears to have largely escaped the intense polarization that afflicts many of our allies and friends.

In the United States and in parts of Europe, resentments that were once expressed through fringe elements are taking centre stage. Extremists are rising to power. Far-right political movements are no longer very far away at all.

But in Canada, the mainstream remains mainstream. The long Canadian tradition of muddling through conflicts and concerns has thus far kept our politics relatively civil – a blessing in these troubled times.

Canada certainly has its fair share of problems. Tariffs imposed by the Trump administration have more than simply dampened growth. They threaten the future of our trading relationship with the United States, which for decades has been fundamental to this country’s economy.

Prime Minister Mark Carney meets with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House.Evan Vucci/The Associated Press

Efforts to promote internal free trade, as a way to compensate for the loss of trade with the United States, are incomplete, to say the least. It remains far too difficult for people, goods and services to move freely across the country, within a uniform regulatory environment.

Speaking of regulations, there are too many of them, obstructing natural resource development and sending entrepreneurs in search of friendlier environments.

Our national security is threatened, not only by Russian and Chinese ambition in the Arctic, but by our own miserable record of underinvestment in defence.

And regional resentments threaten national unity, while younger generations who struggle to find secure jobs and homes that they can afford look with resentment toward the we’re-all-right-Jack complacency of the older and better-off.

And yet these problems pale in comparison to those of........

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