Wherever I go in Canada, people ask me “What if?” questions.
What if the threats to our nation escalate?
What if Trump follows through on his threat to our sovereignty?
In the early days, those questions were posed with a sense of trepidation and fear. As if we couldn’t quite believe that this was actually happening.
But something has shifted.
Canadians understand that we share a vast, undefended border with a nation that is no longer under the rule of law. We are coming to terms with a gangster state — one determined to undermine allies and use intimidation to gain control of our nation’s wealth. There is no reason to believe that those threats will stop.
And Canadians have changed.
We are much tougher and more determined. The “what if” question has morphed into a broader discussion about personal responsibility. People understand that the future of our democracy and our sovereignty depends on our individual willingness to step up and fill the breach.
These questions are about more than a threat on the border. We also face unprecedented pressure from climate catastrophe, rampant disinformation and dangerous exploitation of AI.
So the question is no longer just, “What if?”
It’s this: What role does a citizen have in such a world?
I have thought a great deal about this. I have tried to learn lessons from other epic stories of resistance and resilience. When the Nazis invaded Denmark in 1940, 17-year-old Arne Sjer wrote the 10 commandments of resistance. These rules were shared from family to family to mobilize the Danish people and provide guidance for resisting tyranny.
Denmark was the only European country to successfully rescue the vast majority of its Jewish population.
This is the power of a coordinated understanding of the need to resist.
I want to share with you the speech I gave in Ottawa this past week, following Trump’s threat to destroy an entire civilization. I offered ten steps for Canadian resistance. I share them with you now.
- I promise to do whatever I can to defend the sovereignty, territorial integrity and democracy of Canada.
- I promise to respond to the best of my abilities to help in times of national disasters, floods, fires, or threats to our border.
- I promise to upgrade my skills to help my community and my country — whether in emergency preparedness, first aid or other training.
- I promise to show up for my community and country by voting and participating in grassroots democratic actions, including resistance against anti-democratic threats.
- I promise to remain true to the values of inclusion, fairness and respect for Indigenous rights and will do my best to ensure that no one is singled out because of their sex, gender, race or religious background.
- I promise to boycott everything I can from the United States and to support regional food sovereignty by buying local wherever possible.
- I promise to be an active blocker of disinformation and hate.
- I promise to get active locally, helping to create small groups of resisters and to recruit fence sitters. Solidarity supports courage. We can’t do this alone.
- I promise to be a non-co-operator with tyranny. If my company or institution has contracts with tyrants or attempts to roll back rights, I will voice opposition, slowwalk the work, or refuse altogether. Our labour is power. We need to push the corporate, education and political sectors to take a stand.
- I promise that if our territorial integrity is breached either externally or internally, I will be an active disruptor. I will refuse to obey any orders from those who would undermine our sovereignty and will engage in acts of resistance and acts of mass disobedience to frustrate those who demoralize those fake authorities and make it impossible for any undemocratic threat to govern us.
We can tell ourselves not to overreact. We can hope that NATO will protect us. We can count on the midterms to make everything normal again.
Or we can face the fact that the only thing that will save this beautiful and at times fragile democracy is ourselves — the Canadian people.
We’ve got this.
Keep kicking at the darkness, my friends.