Canada Out of the USMCA & NATO!

February 3rd, 2025

The Central Executive Committee of the Popular Democracy Movement vehemently rejects the repeated statements from the regime of US President Donald Trump suggesting that Canada should be annexed by the United States.

In the context of the continued threat of major tariffs on Canada's economy and attempts to sow division between provincial leaders and federal parties alike, this unacceptable rhetoric must be recognised as a real threat to Canada's sovereignty.

Canada's economy has become increasingly integrated with that of the United States over many decades, to the benefit of corporate monopolies on both sides of the border, and at the expense of workers. Corporate free trade pacts like the USMCA, and its predecessor, NAFTA, have devastated Canada's secondary and tertiary industries, as well as hurting small businesses, farmers, and Canadian workers across the country. In addition to economic costs, such corporate constitutions weaken Canada's ability to enact legislation aimed at protecting the environment, labour rights, and the rights of Indigenous peoples.

Trump's threats of tariffs have also come alongside continued suggestions that NATO members, including Canada, must increase their already bloated military expenditures in order to pay adequate tribute to the US led military alliance.

Ultimately, these increased financial costs are designed to put pressure on Canada's public services like healthcare, public education, and social programs relied on by millions of Canadians. Canada's socialised healthcare system - already experiencing underfunding, and piecemeal contracting out in the form of public private partnerships - will be put at even greater risk of falling to corporate interests and their allies in government offices who aim to see it dismantled and replaced with privatised, US-style, for-profit healthcare. Canada's military budget alone could pay for universal access to free, quality post-secondary education many times over.

Canadians have long been told that they need US protection in order to guarantee their sovereignty from 'threats' to democracy like China, the Russian Federation, and others, yet the first real threat to Canada's independence has come from none other than its "closest ally," the United States itself. Regardless of whether Canada actually becomes 'the 51st state,' Trump's goal is clear: to further convert Canada into a vassal with the purpose of supporting the United States' faltering economy and its imperialist military agenda around the world.

Canadians are now faced with two options. Submit to further domination by transnational corporate interests and subservience to US imperialism, or assert the country's sovereignty and move forward with an independent foreign policy of peace and disarmament, leaving NATO, and scrapping the USMCA in favour of mutually beneficial trade agreements - and not just with our "closest ally."

Central Executive Committee

Popular Democracy Movement