Is Canada preparing for a long shot U.S. invasion?

Could Canada really be preparing for a military confrontation with its closest ally? Well, you heard the Prime Minister talk about this. Now, a BBC report is looking at how the Canadian military is planning to for what seemed like an unlikely scenario of a US invasion. This is raising very uncomfortable questions about our relationship with the US. You know, the two countries are NATO allies. We have been talking about the longest undefended border. We have talked about integrated economies and defense systems. But, you know, the tension over trade, sovereignty, and Donald Trump's rhetoric about Canada has really made this conversation nerve-wracking. Well, how seriously should Canadians take this scenario? And are we actually equipped to defend ourselves? Let's bring in Richard Shamuka. He's Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Richard, thank you so much for taking the time.

Thanks for having me.

As I mentioned, Prime Minister Mark Carney has been talking about this and he says we have the responsibility to look at the possibility of a U.S. invasion. What do you think?

I

mean,

on the one hand,

militaries

generally do continuously planning on a wide range of scenarios and that the Canadian forces have done some limited sort of discussion of what capabilities they have and what are possible things.

on its own should not be that surprising.

However, I really think that within the realm of possibility, it is an exceedingly low-level sort of threat. And the reality is that I think most of the Canadian Air Forces members who are engaged in actual planning against threats they look at what's going on with Russia or China and sort of their continued sort of activities, whether it be in the Arctic or in the Western Pacific or in the Atlantic, as being a far more sort of likely threat and one that they need to spend quite a bit of sort of effort and sort of focus on on any given day.

Okay, so the risk is low, but it does signal a fundamental breakdown in our relationship with the U.S.,

I think it's hard not to see it that way, though I really would caution Canadians to sort of think through what is the current state of U.S. politics and how government operates, right? I think Donald Trump really represents a bit of an aberration, right? If you look at just his polling right now and for the upcoming midterms,

he's

basically the most unpopular president in the modern era. he's plumbing the depths that Nixon had right after Watergate and stuff. So, I mean, this is not a super popular presidency. And if you talk to people below that level, people that work, let's say, in the Pentagon or the State Department or a wide range of government agencies or maybe the sort of the elite that sort of helps run or that comes in a Democrat or even in former Republican parties, they see this as just a disaster. And every given day. And they are just looking for the next day to next day until the presidency changes over, right? So I think that, yes, we have to focus on what he says and all that to some degree. But at the same time, it doesn't... Like, if you just focus on him, then you're kind of missing the broader sort of sway of, you know... politics, people and all