Canada Asks No One for Permission
IThe country is in disorder
Canada today lives in disorder. Three things show it: the country stands in line, the state does not know what it is doing, and the country is cut from the inside into thirteen separate markets.
1. The country stands in line
The doctor. In 2025 the median wait from a family doctor's referral to treatment was 28.6 weeks. That is more than half a year. Patients wait 49.9 weeks for neurosurgery and 48.6 weeks for orthopaedic surgery. In New Brunswick the total wait is 60.9 weeks, more than a year. For all those months a person lives in pain, and a worker cannot work.
Before that line even begins, 5.9 million Canadian adults have no family doctor, no nurse practitioner and no clinic they attend regularly. For them the line starts with the question of who will write the referral at all.
The home. In June 2025 Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation calculated that to bring affordability back to the level of 2019, Canada must build between 430,000 and 480,000 homes a year until 2035. That is roughly double the current pace. In total, up to 4.8 million homes in ten years. The worst gaps are in Ontario, Nova Scotia and British Columbia. Among large cities, Montreal is first and Ottawa, the capital of the country, is second.
Without a home a young family postpones children, and a worker does not move to a plant where there is nowhere to live. The line for housing sits underneath every other line.
Work. In February 2026 unemployment among young people aged 15 to 24 rose to 14.1 per cent. By June it fell to 12.7 per cent and still stayed above the 2017–2019 average of 10.8 per cent. One in eight young Canadians who look for work does not find it.
2. The state does not know what it is doing
Risk. Canada's National Risk Profile, the document by which the state prepares for threats, contains 55,574 words. The word "war" does not appear in it once. The state still prepares for threats by this document today, while the president of the neighbouring country publicly invites Canada to become his state.
Defence. To fourteen questions about who guarantees the nuclear protection of Canada, and by what document, the Department of National Defence answered on 17 September 2026 with the same 46 words: the department neither confirms nor denies that such records exist. The department will not tell its own citizens whether the document on which the existence of the country depends exists.
Money. On 23 September 2026 the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat confirmed in writing that neither the Treasury Board nor its President has authority under the Public Service Superannuation Act to reduce or withhold the pension of a federal public servant dismissed for misconduct. An official dismissed for abuse of office leaves with a full pension paid by the taxpayer. The definition of misconduct was removed from the law in 1999. For twenty-seven years the hole has stood open.
Food. By three guidance documents, of 18 May 2022, 3 May 2023 and 3 May 2024, Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency made notification of gene-edited products voluntary. Labelling is voluntary too. No one amended the regulations: the application of the law was changed by paper that has no force of law. Canada today does not know how many such products are sold in its stores.
Homelessness. In 2017 the state launched the National Housing Strategy: $78.5 billion over ten years. In 2022 the Auditor General examined it and reported that the federal government is putting billions into it and does not know whether chronic homelessness is going down or up as a result. The agencies responsible for it are not working in a coordinated way. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation spent about $4.5 billion and did not know who was benefiting from that money.
A state that does not know what it spends its money on, what it is preparing for and what is sold in its stores cannot govern a country.
3. The country is cut from the inside
In January 2026 the International Monetary Fund measured the barriers inside Canada itself, between its provinces and territories. On average they equal a tariff of about 9 per cent on the country's own goods and services. In education and health care the barriers exceed 40 per cent in tariff equivalent. A nurse from one province cannot simply start working in the next one. A truck carrying the same goods passes different rules at different borders inside one country.
Removing those barriers would raise Canada's real GDP by 6.8 per cent, about $210 billion. The smaller provinces would gain the most.
Canada argues with Washington about tariffs while it keeps a tariff against itself.
IIHow we fell behind what we wanted
Canada has announced its goals many times. Here are three that show how far the country has fallen behind its own decisions.
1. The Arctic
The naval facility. In 2007 the government announced the Nanisivik Naval Facility in Nunavut, to "significantly strengthen Canada's sovereignty over the Arctic". Construction was to begin in 2010 and full operation was set for 2015. Then the date moved to 2018. Then to 2025. On 21 May 2026 the Department of National Defence announced that construction would stop. Nineteen years, and the Arctic is left without the facility it was promised.
The icebreaker. On 28 February 2008 the government announced a polar icebreaker: $720 million, delivery in 2017. Today the polar icebreaker at the Seaspan shipyard costs $4.27 billion, with delivery in 2032. The price has grown almost six times and the date has moved fifteen years.
Power. The Kivalliq transmission line is meant to connect Nunavut to the Manitoba grid. Its cost is estimated at $3.39 billion. Since 2018 the federal government has allocated less than $15 million to it, 0.44 per cent. Nunavut is not connected to the national grid by a single wire. The communities of Kivalliq still live on diesel brought in by sea once a year.
Bases. Of the 28 bases and wings of the Canadian Armed Forces, not one stands north of the 60th parallel. 67.5 per cent of the country's population and 54.5 per cent of its industrial jobs are within one hundred kilometres of the United States border. The Arctic, whose sovereignty Ottawa has talked about for twenty years, is empty, and the whole country is stretched along one border.
2. Defence
At the NATO summit in Wales in 2014 Canada committed to raise defence spending to 2 per cent of GDP. In 2024 it spent 1.47 per cent and was one of eleven allies that had not met the commitment. The target was reached only for 2025, eleven years after the promise, in the same year that all 32 members of the alliance crossed the two per cent line.
For eleven years the country promised its allies what it did only under pressure.
3. Wealth
In March 2026 Statistics Canada named the main reason Canada is falling behind the United States: slower growth in productivity. Since 2000 the productivity gap with the United States has compounded to 26 per cent. Every hour of a Canadian's work produces less and less compared with an hour of an American's work, and the gap widens every year.
Canada wanted to be a rich country with resources, land and people. It remains a country that sends more than two thirds of its exports to a single buyer.
IIIThe demographic crisis
Fertility. In 2024 Canada's total fertility rate fell to a historic low. In 2025 it stayed at the bottom: 1.26 children per woman. Simple replacement of the population requires 2.1. Canada has entered the group of countries with ultra-low fertility, next to Japan, South Korea, Italy, Singapore and Finland.
Age of mothers. The average age of a mother at birth has reached 31.9 years. In 1976 it was 26.7.
Childlessness. 51.5 per cent of Canadian women aged 20 to 49 have no children. The share of childless women over 50 rose from 14.1 per cent in 1990 to 17.4 per cent in 2022.
More deaths than births. In the first quarter of 2025, 5,628 more people died in Canada than were born. In the fourth quarter of 2025, again more deaths than births. In the first quarter of 2026, again. Canada's natural increase has turned negative.
The population is falling. From 1 January to 1 April 2026 the population of Canada fell by 55,025 people.
For years the entire growth of the country rested on immigration:
As soon as the inflow was cut, the population went down.
A country that grows only through the people it brings in is importing its own future. Workers, taxes, the army, pensions: in twenty years all of it rests on the children Canada is not having today. Every year at a rate of 1.26, Canada loses children who in twenty years should be working, paying taxes and serving.
Demography is a question of the country's survival. It cannot be left to the housing market and the labour market, which today work against the family.
IVVassalage to the United States
Canada today exists as a state by permission of its neighbour. That is how American leaders themselves put it, aloud and on the record.
The price of statehood. On 28 May 2025 the President of the United States wrote that Canada's participation in the Golden Dome system would cost $61 billion if Canada remained a "separate, but unequal, Nation", and zero dollars if it became the 51st state. Protection has been put up for sale. The currency of payment is Canadian statehood.
Canada as a state. On 24 August 2026, at a rally in Maine, the Vice-President of the United States said: "We have to remember Canada is a state — sorry, Freudian slip." In the same remarks he said that Canada "quite literally would get invaded by a foreign country were it not for the umbrella of protection provided by the United States of America." The Secretary of Commerce called the 51st state "the best way to actually merge the economies of Canada and the United States". In March 2026 the President called the Prime Minister of Canada the "future governor of Canada". On 1 June 2026, after the news that Canada had entered a technical recession, he posted: "51st State!"
Tariffs. On 20 July 2026 the President of the United States signed Proclamations 11046, 11047 and 11048 under section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930. In 96 years no President had used that provision against any country. The first time is against Canada. The rate is 50 per cent, the ceiling the provision allows. The duties have been in force since 22 August 2026. The proclamation itself records that the next step is the exclusion of Canadian goods from the United States.
The treaty. On 1 July 2026 the United States declined to extend CUSMA. Canada and Mexico had both stated in advance that they wanted it renewed. The agreement that carries most of Canada's exports now depends every year on a decision in Washington, until 2036.
The market. In the first half of 2026, 68 per cent of Canada's merchandise exports went to the United States. The second buyer, the United Kingdom, takes 9.2 per cent, seven times less.
The aircraft. The mission data of the F-35, Canada's main future fighter, is held at a Lockheed Martin facility in Texas. Sixteen of the 88 aircraft are under signed contract. A defence that runs on another country's software, spare parts and servers can be stopped without a single shot.
The umbrella. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty obliges an ally to take "such action as it deems necessary". The assisting party chooses the measure of assistance. The NORAD Agreement of 2006 contains no undertaking by either party to defend the other against nuclear attack. Either party may leave it on twelve months' notice. The Parliament of Canada has never voted on it.
The balance.
The defence of Canada against nuclear attack rests on an arrangement that no document obliges anyone to honour, that either side may end within a year, and that the Parliament of Canada never voted on. That is vassalage: the security of the country depends on the will of another country.
VVassalage to Britain
The king of another country. The head of state of Canada is the King of the United Kingdom. In the Motard case in 2019 the Quebec Court of Appeal confirmed the "principle of symmetry": the King of the United Kingdom is automatically the King of Canada. The succession to the Canadian throne follows the British one. In 2020 the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear the case.
Where Britain was. On 27 February 2025, in the Oval Office, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom handed the President of the United States a letter from the King inviting him on a second state visit. Asked about Canada, he answered that journalists were looking for a division that was not there. On 8 May 2025 the United Kingdom became the first country to get a trade deal with the United States. On 16–18 September 2025 the King received the President of the United States at Windsor on a state visit: the same President who had called Canada his future state.
Where the Commonwealth was. The Secretary-General of the Commonwealth issued no statement of solidarity with Canada. No public statement by Australia in defence of Canada has been found.
The oath. Every new citizen of Canada swears allegiance to the King of the United Kingdom. Every member of the House of Commons swears allegiance to him before taking a seat, under section 128 of the Constitution Act, 1867. In 2022 Quebec made the oath to the King optional for its members. The federal Parliament did not. In 2022 the House of Commons rejected a motion to sever ties with the monarchy, 266 votes to 44.
What Canadians think. Angus Reid, 9 March 2026: 47 per cent of Canadians want the monarchy in Canada to end, 29 per cent want it to continue. 48 per cent oppose Charles as Canada's head of state.
The heritage of Canada today is a heritage of vassalage, subjecthood and satellite status. When a neighbouring power publicly invites Canada to become its state, the King of Canada receives the president of that power at Windsor with full honours, and the King's government is the first to get a trade deal from that power.
VITo destroy vassalage takes someone with the strength to break it
Canada is humiliated in the open. The president of the neighbouring country calls its prime minister a future governor. The vice-president calls it a state and turns it into a joke about a slip of the tongue. The commerce secretary proposes merging the economies through annexation. A tariff provision untouched for 96 years is taken out of the statute book for the first time against Canada, at the highest rate it allows. The protection of the country is put up for sale at a price of $61 billion or of statehood. The Crown to which Canada swears allegiance receives that president at Windsor in the same months.
Vassalage does not end by itself. It is held in place by the habit of asking, waiting and hoping that the strong will be kind. Canada has lived for a century and a half under a foreign crown and for almost eighty years under a foreign umbrella. Its political class grew up in that habit and knows no other.
Ottawa's current answer is counter-tariffs on $27.6 billion of goods from 8 September 2026. Tariffs against a country with an economy ten times larger remain a statement of principle. They do not change the fact that 68 per cent of exports go to one buyer, that the nuclear protection of the country rests on someone else's word, and that the head of state is the king of another country.
Canada must stop asking and start demanding: in writing, with a date, with the provision of law and with the next step named in advance. A demanding Canada looks like this.
- To Washington, a written demand: name the document that obliges the United States to defend Canada against nuclear attack. If there is no document, Canada builds its own defence and announces it openly.
- NORAD goes to a vote of the Parliament of Canada. The agreement on which the defence of the country depends is either ratified by Parliament or renegotiated by Canada on its own terms.
- To the section 338 proclamations, an answer announced in advance. Every line of Canada's answer to the next step, the exclusion of its goods, is published before that step is taken.
- To London, a resolution of independence. Canada does not submit to the crown of another country.
Vassalage is broken only by strength. Canada needs a leader who does not care whether Washington is angered or London is offended. He asks them for nothing. He sets a deadline, names the next step and takes it on the appointed day. Every "51st state" receives an answer the same day. Every tariff receives an answer announced before it takes effect. Every threat is entered in the register.
From this day, Canada asks no one for permission to be Canada.
VIIWhat Canada needs
1. Its own nuclear deterrent
Article X of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons allows a party to withdraw if extraordinary events have jeopardized its supreme interests. Notice goes to all parties and to the Security Council, the procedure takes three months, and no one can forbid it.
France maintains 290 warheads for 13 per cent of its defence budget. For Canada that is about US$5.7 billion a year. The price the United States named for Canada's place under someone else's shield is $61 billion. For that money Canada can maintain its own deterrent for more than ten years, and own it.
Canada has held nuclear weapons on its own soil before: for 21 years, from 1963 to 1984. Bomarc missiles at North Bay and La Macaza carried nuclear warheads under Canadian skies. Canada does not need to cross a new line. It needs to return to where it already stood.
In 1994 Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons in exchange for assurances from, among others, the United States and Russia. The assurances did not stop the invasion. That is the only full-scale experiment in replacing strength with assurances, and its result is known.
2. A defence that Canada owns
The NORAD Agreement goes to a vote of the Parliament of Canada for the first time: it entered into force by an exchange of diplomatic notes, without a vote. Canada buys the remaining 72 of the 88 fighters only on three conditions: the mission data is held on Canadian territory, Canada has access to the source code, and Canada upgrades its own aircraft. The competing Swedish offer includes these conditions, and that is the measure by which Canada chooses. The defence of the country runs on Canadian servers, Canadian spare parts and Canadian software.
3. Industry and capital move north
Two thirds of the population and more than half of industry stand within one hundred kilometres of the United States border. New plants are built beyond reach from the border: in the northern parts of the provinces, on the shores of Hudson Bay, in the North.
Capital follows a northern investment tax credit modelled on the Atlantic Investment Tax Credit, subsection 127(9) of the Income Tax Act, which has worked for Atlantic Canada for decades. For production in the North, a zone of zero employer contributions modelled on the northern counties of Norway.
4. Hudson Bay becomes Canada's inland sea
A ring of five or six ports is built around the bay: Churchill, Arviat, Rankin Inlet and further along both shores. The Kivalliq line and a road lead to the ports. Churchill is Canada's only Arctic deep-water port with a railway to the south. Port of Churchill Plus has been with the Major Projects Office since 11 September 2025. Warming lengthens the shipping season in the bay every year. For Canada this is an advantage, and Canada must take it first.
The centre of the North is Arviat. On 11 February 2026 Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami chose Arviat for the main campus of Inuit Nunangat University, opening in 2030. The university, the port, the line and the road meet at one point.
5. A northern fleet
Canada needs a fast naval fleet to patrol the Arctic and Greenland. Canadian shipyards build it, and its bases stand in the ports of the ring. Canada's way out is to the Arctic, to Greenland and to Iceland. A fleet stationed in the North makes the Arctic Canadian in fact.
The country has the money for it. Under the NATO decision Canada directs 1.5 per cent of GDP to defence-related infrastructure and resilience, about $45 billion a year. That money builds ports, airstrips, roads, communication lines and bases in the North. Every dollar works twice: as defence and as development of the region.
6. Its own cars and its own aircraft
A country whose fighter mission data sits in Texas does not own its sky. Canada makes its own top-class cars and its own aircraft again. The first customer is the state: the Government of Canada drives Canadian cars and flies Canadian aircraft. Then the world market. With artificial intelligence, designing an engine today is easier than it was for the founders of today's car and aircraft companies.
7. One internal market
The barriers between provinces come down completely: in services, in licensing, in health care and education. A doctor or nurse licensed in one province works in any province. A truck follows one set of rules from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Plus 6.8 per cent of GDP, about $210 billion, without a single dollar from the budget.
8. Family and births
The birth rate becomes a performance indicator of every federal program that touches housing, taxes and work. A home for a young family is built before everything else: 430,000 to 480,000 homes a year is a task of the state, which it must carry out with a date and a report. Canada stakes its future on its own people and its own children.
A family with children gets a home first, in every housing program paid for by the federal budget. The ports and plants of the North are built together with homes for the families of those who work there. A plant with no homes for families runs on rotation, and people on rotation do not start families. Every housing, tax and labour program reports two numbers: how many families got a home, and how many children were born in those families.
9. Its own workforce
An unemployed person gets a place at a new plant. Shortages of specialists are closed by training: fast, cheap and for a specific job. Every young Canadian without work today is a future worker of a port, a shipyard, a power line and a plant in the North. The 12.7 per cent youth unemployment of June 2026 is the first intake for the North, already living in the country and waiting for work.
10. The university as an intermediary for the employer
The employer says what people need to know. The university teaches exactly that in six to twelve months. Then come benefits, quotas and placement directly with that employer. Graduates who stay to work in the North have their student debt written off, on the Norwegian model. Today four years go to things that are not needed, and the plant retrains the graduate anyway.
11. Its own voice
Canada adopts a resolution of independence: Canada does not submit to the crown of another country. Canada speaks for itself, in Washington, in London and in the world, and holds the documents that show who failed to defend it and when.
Every statement by a foreign leader about annexing Canada receives a written answer from the Government of Canada on the same day: with a date, with a demand to withdraw the words, and with the next step Canada will take if they are not withdrawn. Every such statement and every answer go into an open register. Within a year Canada will have a complete record of who pressured it and how it answered. A country that records every act of pressure and answers it the same day stops being a convenient target.
VIIIResponsibility
Canada today is humiliated. Its citizens stand in line for a doctor and for a home, its state does not know what it spends its money on, its North is empty, more people die in it than are born, and its own King, while the neighbour calls Canada his state, seats him at the banquet table in Windsor and raises a glass to him.
Canada needs a leader who will turn a humiliated country into a demanding one. Who will burn the disorder out of the state and make every department answer for every dollar, every deadline and every silence. Who will give the North back to the country, with ports, plants, a fleet and people. Who will put births and the family at the centre of policy. Who will break the vassalage to Washington and London and give Canada its own defence and its own voice.
I am ready to take on this responsibility and this weight. Are you?
Danilo Dzyuban