Mike Colledge: Canadians are ready for sweeping change. Will governments follow?

The Trump schism is a chance to arrest a decline decades in the making

By: Mike Colledge

Over the past weekend, Canadians have seen a deluge of news coverage about the breakdown in negotiations between Canada and the United States. However, the collapse of the U.S.-Canada trade talks isn’t the turning point in this story. It’s the moment we stopped being able to look away from a decline that was already decades in the making.

Over the last 18 months, we’ve rightly focused on what feels like a dramatic shift in U.S.-Canada relations. We’ve made necessary changes to take greater control of our own destiny, but this latest rupture reinforces how often Canada has found itself reacting rather than leading in response to the Trump White House. Our challenges, however, pre-date Trump 2.0.

It’s tempting to make this about Trump. He’s earned the attention. He should be Canada’s “Man of the Year” in 2025 and 2026. Not for anything he’s accomplished, but for the sheer force of his impact. He shifted a national election. He got Ottawa to finally spend on defence. He briefly welded together provinces that usually can’t agree on the time of day. Say what you want about the man, he’s been one hell of a catalyst.

But a catalyst isn’t a cause. Long before Trump 2.0, Canadians had already settled into an era of lower expectations. We could feel it: a growing, aging and increasingly diverse population our systems weren’t built for; housing and health care designed for a different time; infrastructure quietly falling behind; and institutions that often seemed to be running on inertia rather than ambition. None of that is Trump’s doing, and none of it is new.

It’s not really any single government’s doing either, though it’s tempting to say so. We elected governments again and again despite missed defence targets, missed emissions targets, missed fiscal targets, and a policy drift that weakened productivity and eroded the old consensus around immigration. We didn’t get fooled. We chose comfort.

Trading ambition for stability was a rational bargain for a once-prosperous Canada. But this failure of nerve isn’t uniquely ours. Much of the G7 has followed a similar path, normalizing lower expectations. It’s what happens to countries, institutions, and citizens when comfort becomes the overriding objective.

The trade war isn’t some sudden shock to the system. It’s a textbook manifestation of structural challenges that have been building for years, simply the latest in a long line of warnings.

Well before trade talks turned into a trade war, nearly seven in ten Canadians (68 per cent) told us they had already lowered their expectations of what a good quality of life looks like for them. That’s not despair. It’s a country quietly adjusting to what it senses is coming, long before political leaders or headlines fully caught up.

The trade war is not the cause of Canada’s Endurance Economy. It’s another chapter in the story. Canadians had already begun adjusting their expectations, delaying major life decisions, and preparing for a future that felt more constrained than the one their parents enjoyed. Trump didn’t create that reality, he simply made it impossible to ignore.

But adapting to less has a shelf life. Patience isn’t infinite because the desire to do better than the generation before us is close to a human instinct. We want our children to have more opportunities than we did, not simply hold steady, and we definitely do not want to see them worse off. A population that has already accepted some pain will not indefinitely accept pain without progress, or at least without visible effort.

What happens next isn’t really about the trade war, Trump, or even which government happens to be in office. It’s about whether we use this moment to close the gap between the country we’ve been and the country our circumstances now require us to become.

Canadians recognize the challenges. They have been patient and they aren’t asking for guarantees, yet. They’re asking for three things: real effort, honest transparency about where things stand, and a willingness from business, government, and institutions to share in the discomfort rather than pass it down.

We have embarked on a nation-building project. As such, it requires more than just policy. We need more than just more housing, more investment, and more infrastructure. Nor can it be just about politics, whether that’s matching tariffs or delivering another round of rallying speeches. Those things are necessary, but they are not sufficient because this level of national renewal and the shift we must make from comfort and complacency to competitiveness and courage requires bringing Canadians along on the journey and speaking plainly about the choices ahead: what the plan is, what it will cost, what trade-offs are unavoidable, and what role each of us has to play in making it work.

A citizenry that has already lowered its expectations will not stay patient with a recovery being done to them rather than with them. Canadians have already shown they’re willing to accept difficult truths. What they won’t accept indefinitely is drift. The challenge now isn’t convincing people that change is necessary. It’s proving that our leaders, institutions, and businesses are prepared to pursue it with the same urgency Canadians have already begun to show themselves.

Mike Colledge is the Executive Insights Lead at Ipsos Canada.

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