‘Neither strong nor free’ until now: Canada’s sovereign reckoning

Eight years of following America’s China policy bought Canada exactly zero credit, and instead it culminated in a full-blown sovereignty crisis.

Prime Minister Mark Carney standing firm against ‘being told to do something or being restricted to doing something else’ is the philosophical foundation of Canada’s reset with Beijing, writes Wenran Jiang. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade

Opinion

BY WENRAN JIANG

September 14, 2026

In October 2018, I wrote in The Globe and Mail that under the then-newly renegotiated Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, “Canada is neither strong nor free.” The so-called poison pill—Article 32.10—surrendered Canada’s sovereign right to negotiate trad...

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