I saw someone saying recently that Canada has made a huge shift away from the US. As someone Canadian, I haven’t noticed anything beyond relatively minor individual decisions (IE, not going to the US as a tourist). I’d like to be wrong, but from my understanding, this is effectively nothing. Has there actually been any sort of large scale move away from US dependence?
Absolutely, Canada has now even made defense agreements with EU joining the EU SAFE program, and very early on trade agreements were expanded.
They have been very active rerouting export goods hit by US tariffs away from USA to other destinations, helped by the government paving the way for these new trade routes.
I can see from other comments that some Canadians don’t think the government has done enough, but I doubt they are aware of the speed the Canadian government has acted with, these things are very difficult to do quickly.
Look for instance on the trade agreement between south America and EU, it has taken 25 years to make!!
Canada has already made several international trade agreements beneficial to Canada in less than a year.
The fact that they are also looking into buying fighter jets from Swedish SAAB a non US country is also a very big deal. Which I as an EU citizen really hope goes through, because it seems like such a good deal on cooperation on sharing technology and make better planes on both sides. With SAAB and Canada partnering, instead of Canada just becoming a customer.
The net result of it all is that despite US sanctions against Canada, the Canadian economy has grown more than the US economy in 2025!
EDIT PS:
Technically the US GDP growth is slightly higher than Canada, but that is driven by the AI bubble, the real economy of USA when not counting AI is slowing down, as can clearly be seen on lack of job creation that falls far behind the increase in population.
To chime in from the Great White North, I agree with much of what you’ve written, though I haven’t spoken to anyone that thinks Canada has moved too slow.
What’s been done so far has happened as efficiently as government workings can be done, but when I go to a restaurant I don’t skip the entree if the waitstaff brings out the appetizer with haste.