Mark Carney's Dominion of Canada, Royal Subject of the British Crown

Florida Man vs. new colonialism in 2020s North America

Introduction

Ah. The 2020s. Strangely, we’re more than halfway through this decade already, but it has packed quite a historical punch! A global pandemic. War breaking out in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. A volatile American stock market. An American president floating the idea of acquiring new colonies for these United States. Sometimes, I even forget that we’re in the 2020s. Instead, I do a second take to see if we are in the 1920s.

Whispers of new colonialism have emerged in the Americas. In his second presidency, Donald Trump claims that he wants to conquer Greenland, Panama, and Canada. It’s really not out of the norm for America. In fact, it’s probably stranger that the United States has not acquired new territory from another country since we purchased the Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917. What ever happened to Manifest Destiny? Well, President Trump wants to manifest it once more while the Canadians want destiny manifested on them.

We might not agree with expansionist tendencies. That’s so 19th and early 20th century, but — if you are a country who wants to speak about expansionism — at least have the pride and confidence to say that you are going to conquer another country. Do not proudly invite another country to dominate you. Unfortunately, Prime Minister Mark Carney is doing just that with Canada and its old colonial superior of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Then Prince Charles in Canada in 2017.

His Majesty King Charles the Third, King of Canada

We sometimes forget that there is literally a King of Canada. Yes, the Canadians still recognize the British monarch as their head of state. I know. It’s all ceremonial nowadays. Canada has its own military, its own economy, and own legal system. It has full autonomy, but its autonomy came quite late in 1982 with the Canada Act. Until then, the Canadians needed approval from the British Parliament for constitutional amendments, but the British Parliament never vetoed anything in Canada. For all intents and purposes, Canada gained legal autonomy from the U.K. in 1931 with the Statute of Westminster.

These gradual attainments of autonomy completely distinguish Canada from its southern neighbor the United States. We severed ourselves from Great Britain in one fell swoop with a revolutionary war. Meanwhile, Canada played nice for two more centuries. Even though we share much of the same cultures, perhaps this difference in journeys to sovereignty demonstrates an innate attitudinal difference between Canadians and Americans.

Despite all of these piecemeal progressions toward full independence, Canada has never stopped recognizing the British monarch. It might seem like a joke to us Americans, but King Charles III’s official style on Canadian legal documents is: Charles the Third, by the Grace of God, King of Canada and of His other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth.

That’s a mouthful! But Canada is not the only one. All the cool former British colonies are doing it too! We still have the British Commonwealth, which includes 14 independent countries that still recognize the British monarch as their heads of state:

1. Canada

2. Australia

3. New Zealand

4. Jamaica

5. Bahamas

6. Grenada

7. Saint Lucia

8. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

9. Antigua and Barbuda

10. Saint Kitts and Nevis

11. Papua New Guinea

12. Solomon Islands

13. Tuvalu

14. Belize

Again, we forget there is a King of Canada or King of Jamaica or King of New Zealand. (It’s not Peter Jackson.) Fresh off an electoral victory on April 28, Canadian PM Mark Carney wants to remind us about this beautiful Commonwealth, and Canada is a big member!

To do his best at reminding us, Canadian PM Mark Carney has invited King Charles III — the King of Canada — to open the Parliament of Canada on May 27. Even though Charles is head of state of Canada and all those other countries, it is not normal for the British monarch to sail across the seas to preside over his colonial subjects. The duty of opening parliament after a recent election is usually reserved for the governor-general, the British monarch’s official representative in his realms.

Canada has a governor-general as do all those other Commonwealth countries. The British monarch technically selects the governor-general, but he does so on the advice of the prime minister. The days of King George VI sending his brother Edward VIII to the Bahamas are over. Instead, the king selects someone from within Canada, but — in Year of Our Lord 2025 — PM Mark Carney has stripped current Governor-General Mary Simon of this traditional role. No. The Dominion of Canada will genuflect before its colonial overseers by inviting King Charles III.

The British monarch has not opened the parliament of one of the Commonwealth realms since Queen Elizabeth II did so in 1990 in New Zealand. It has not happened in Canada since 1977 before the passage of 1982’s Canada Act. Therefore, this 2025 opening of the Canadian Parliament marks the first time that the British monarch has presided over the event during Canada’s 42-year history of full legal independence from the United Kingdom. In other words, Mark Carney is breaking clear norms that no other Canadian PM has wanted to do in nearly half a century.

The Canadian King Counters America

Because of the historic nature of this invitation of the British monarch, I naturally wonder if some specific event triggered Prime Minister Mark Carney to want to make this choice. When I saw this headline from Canada, I immediately begin thinking about how Carney won this election. More specifically, how did he turn around the Liberal Party’s fortunes in an election cycle whereby the Conservatives were “supposed” to win a resounding majority in Parliament? What happened in the past few months? How did Pierre Poilievre’s prohibitive frontrunner status vanish?

Within Canada, the biggest change was former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announcing his resignation from the premiership on January 6 this year. On March 14, Trudeau left office once the Liberal Party had chosen Mark Carney as its new leader, but perhaps another change in leadership strangely had an even greater impact on the 2025 Canadian election. Of course, I speak of Donald Trump’s return to the American presidency on January 20, 2025, just 14 days after Justin Trudeau announced his resignation.

As we know by now, Trump used his very first weeks with the bully pulpit to bully Canada. He referred to Justin Trudeau as the “Governor of Canada” and threatened to turn Canada into the 51st state in the Union. Many supporters of Trump might defend these comments as just words. They have no tangible impact. Perhaps this is true, but Trump’s threats of tariffs against Canada have an actual impact. Tariffs hurt consumers in both countries involved. Consequently, an American tariff on Canadian imports hurts Americans too, but it hurts Canadians way more. The United States accounts for 63.0% of international trade for Canada while Canada only accounts for 14.3% of international trade for the United States.

This rhetoric by Trump startled many Canadian voters. In response, Carney took advantage, but I contend that Canadians’ antipathy toward the new Trump presidency does not stem from any potential economic impact of Trump’s new tariffs. Rather, it is an emotional response. Canadians have an inherent insecurity about being the inferior developed Anglophone country on the North American continent. The United States has a population 8.8 times that of Canada. Canada relies on our military might. The U.S. GDP is 13 times greater than that of Canada. More relevantly, the American GDP per capita is approximately 55% larger than that of Canada. One U.S. state has a GDP larger than that of Canada, which only has a GDP of $2.14 trillion. California has a GDP of $4.1 trillion, nearly double that of Canada.

The USA: Britain’s Black Sheep

By inviting King Charles III to open the Parliament of Canada, the Canadians are choosing a different colonial power over the United States. They are choosing their old colonial power of Great Britain. If the Canadians are going to demarcate the biggest difference with the United States, they are identifying a major historical one. Our cultures are pretty similar (at least to Anglophone Canada). Our accents are pretty similar beyond some different pronunciations. We consume mostly the same media. Then, what is the greatest difference between Canada and the United States.

One could point to the existence of an entire region that almost exclusively speaks a different language with Québec, but the biggest difference is in how we earned independence from Britain. In the United States, we won our independence through a violent revolutionary war while the Canadian colonies (Québec, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Prince Edward Island¹) did not join the Thirteen Colonies in the revolt against the British. Instead, Canada gained its independence through a slow, gradual process. Therefore, the Canadians are much less “rebellious” than the Americans. If we are both children of Britain, then we Americans are the black sheep. The Canadians “followed the rules”.

Now, the Canadians are making a statement that they will side with another colonial power. Strangely, instead of redoubling their autonomy and strength as an independent nation amid criticism from Trump, they are instead bowing to another king — their old British king. So much of Canada entails wishing to become a colony of somewhere else.

Mark Carney’s Ambiguous Identity

Mark Carney’s nationality also plays a part in his seemingly subservient attitude to Britain. In many ways, Canadian PM Mark Carney has lived as a global nomad for his entire life, especially, in the last decade or so. Mark Carney himself was born in the Northwest Territories but raised in Edmonton, Alberta. He first left Canada when he went to Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for his undergraduate studies. After Harvard, he went to another country when he earned a doctoral degree in economics from Oxford in England. At this point, Mark Carney had learned from the two premier academic institutions in the two most powerful Western countries post-WWII.

Oxford and Harvard had trained Carney in the ways of the global, economic elite. He learned the “right way” of running a country’s economy. It doesn’t matter where. It could be the United States. It could be the United Kingdom. It could be Canada. The “experts” at Oxford and Harvard have discovered the “correct” way to manage economies as if each of them were Isaac Newton promulgating the Laws of Gravity. (Sadly, for Oxford, Isaac Newton did his studies at Cambridge.) Carney then left Oxford in 1995.

With his degrees — or, rather, tickets to the global elite — in hand, Mark Carney marched to Goldman Sachs, the most prestigious investment bank in the world. Did he go to their Toronto office? Yes, he did — but only for a brief while. He traveled the world with the imprimatur of Goldman Sachs! He went to New York, Boston, Tokyo, and London! Again, the approved way of managing an economy works everywhere — from Alberta to Japan.

In 2003, Mark Carney graciously left the rapacious world of investment banking at Goldman Sachs, but he sure did learn a lot! Now, it was time to help his fellow countrymen. He went to Ottawa to serve in the Bank of Canada. Sure, he took a pay cut, but it was worth it. Like a true colonialist, he traveled to his mother countries of the United States and the United Kingdom, attained their superior knowledge, and brought the knowledge back to the more naïve Canada. In 2008, he rose to the level of Governor of the Bank of Canada and steered his country through the tumultuous times of the Great Recession.

Yes, he liked helping out his own home country, but Canada was not enough. Carney needed to go somewhere more important … more elite, so he went to one of the most powerful financial institutions in the world — the Bank of England — a great enforcer of new financial imperialism in the modern, decolonized post-WWII world. Sure, it wasn’t the Federal Reserve, but — when you walk into those offices in London — you see all the wealth. Something tells you that some English bloke — sometime in the past — stole something from somebody else, but it’s better not to think about it. The Elgin Marbles are pretty as they are. The Greeks wouldn’t know how to care for them anyway. Likewise, your money is better in our hands here in London.

In England, Mark Carney served as governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020. He even gained British citizenship! During his tenure, Brexit shook the British elites, but Carney made sure to chide the coal miners in the Midlands into voting “remain” on the referendum. Of course, the middle class in the U.K. was going to listen to a Canadian who worked at Goldman Sachs and went to Harvard about the future of their nation. Once he retired from the Bank of England, he returned to Ottawa with the other Laurentians in the Canadian elite.

It wasn’t the American elite or British elite, but it would do until Mark Carney seized the Canadian throne from Justin Trudeau in March 2025. Carney seemingly came out of nowhere as he had no elected position in Canadian politics when the Liberal Party crowned him as their new leader and Canada’s new prime minister. Where did he come from? It makes me think that the Liberal Party created him in a lab in Ottawa. They made a man so inoffensive that Canadian voters could ascribe anything onto him. He was a blank slate in the way that Joe Biden was in 2020 and in the way that Kamala Harris tried to be in 2024. Mark Carney was truly a “ham sandwich” candidate, and his success revealed that Canadians did not necessarily love Pierre Poilievre or hate the Liberal Party. Rather, Canadians hated Justin Trudeau, and they would vote for any generic Liberal not named Justin Trudeau over the Conservative Leader.

From my perspective as an American voter, I saw Pierre Poilievre’s flirtation with the premiership in the same way that I saw Florida Governor Ron DeSantis during his quixotic attempt at defeating Donald Trump in the 2024 Republican presidential primaries. On paper, Ron DeSantis seemed great after Donald Trump lost in November 2020 and into his landslide victory in the Florida gubernatorial race in November 2022, but — in the end — Ron DeSantis seemed weak in comparison to Donald Trump.

In theory and in the minds of Trump-skeptic conservative elites, Ron DeSantis worked. Rupert Murdoch thought so, but Donald Trump has a gravitas and charisma that the dorky Ron DeSantis could never match. I saw Pierre Poilievre in the exact same way. Conservative Party elites in Ontario crafted him in a lab after their failed campaigns against Justin Trudeau with Andrew Scheer in 2019 and Erin O’Toole in 2021. He was CHARISMATIC. He was good on TELEVISION, but Pierre Poilievre could not overcome the managerial nature of MARK CARNEY … the GLOBAL ECONOMIC EXPERT. Disparate left-wing Canadian nationalism came into play, and Canadians did not want some simulacrum of Donald Trump. They wanted the listless vessel that emerged out of some cave in Ottawa.

This background of Mark Carney leads me to question his loyalties. I understand that he is Canadian, but I think that he views Canada not as an independent nation but rather one piece of a larger mosaic of Western countries. In his world, he hates the idea of joining the United States, but how opposed would he be to joining the European Union? We get the sense that all the opposition toward the United States, Donald Trump, and perceived 21st-century American imperialism was fabricated. Carney is Canadian. Carney is British. Carney is an Oxford man. Carney is a Harvard man. Carney is whatever you want. In that case, why not break norms and invite your British monarch to open your newly subservient Parliament? As long as it isn’t Donald Trump!

Canada’s Flimsy Identity

Albertan and Québécois Secession

Beyond Mark Carney, Canada has a flimsy identity too. All of this ambiguity goes way beyond just one prime minister, who will leave in a few years anyway. Within Canada, the English speakers want to defer to the British Crown as Carney has done. The Quebeckers want to cosplay as the French. They seemingly care more about French than the French do. The French still allow KFC locations to label themselves “KFC” while, in Québec, KFC must brand its locations as “PFK” (Poulet Frit Kentucky). Some Canadians seemingly want to join the United States. Whispers of an Albertan secession have emerged in the past few years, accelerating after Carney’s recent win.

As an American, I cannot accurately gauge the views of Albertans. I have always suspected that this sentiment is largely wish-casting from Americans. We have this desire to “save” the Albertans. They like rodeos there! They have cowboys! They have oil! Yeehaw! It’s basically Texas with the Rocky Mountains!

Yves-François Blanchet vs. Alberta

On May 7, Quebecker MP Yves-François Blanchet critiqued Alberta on this front. Blanchet serves as the leader of the Bloc Québécois in the Canadian Parliament. He represents the riding of Boloeil-Chambly, which consists of suburbs approximately 25 miles outside the Québécois metropolis of Montreal. The Bloc Québécois (BQ) serves as the third-largest party in the Canadian Parliament. The BQ pushes for Quebec nationalism and independence within the Canadian Parliament. Pretty obviously, the Bloc Québécois only has seats in Québec in the same way that the Scottish National Party only has Scottish seats in the British Parliament. Out of Québec’s total of 71 seats in the Canadian Parliament, the BQ holds 23 of the seats.

As you can see in the image above, the BQ had a net loss of 10 seats in the 2025 election. They mostly lost seats to Mark Carney’s Liberal Party. Nonetheless, the Bloc Québécois had a much better showing than the other larger minor party did — the New Democratic Party — a social democratic party typically to the left of the Liberal Party. In the 2025 election, the NDP went from 24 seats to a measly 7 seats. The NDP leader, Jagmeet Singh, lost his own riding of Burnaby Central in British Columbia. Only one other party has representation in the Canadian Parliament — the Green Party — which went from 2 seats to only 1 seat in this recent election.

On May 7, Yves-François Blanchet held an English press conference in the week following the election. A journalist asked him about the discourse surrounding the calls for Albertan secession from the rest of Canada. The journalist specifically asked if Blanchet had any advice for those advocating Albertan secession. Blanchet responded with the following. In this response, he admits the limitations of the BQ’s own successes recently.

Our success so far does not place me in a position to give them tips about what to do, but I could give them tips about what not to do. Not now. The first idea is to define oneself as a nation. Therefore, it requires a culture of their own. And I am not certain that oil and gas qualify to define a culture. But it's theirs to decide if they want to revindicate the right to self-determination. I would never interfere in that. It belongs to them. I would like us to be the first to do so.

The part of this quote that drew attention was that he glibly reduced Albertan culture to oil and gas. Perhaps he is right. Perhaps Alberta’s only culture is petroleum plus horses, rodeos, trucks, and guns. Arguably, the State of Texas has more ability to unite as a nation than the Province of Alberta. I mean … Texas was an independent country from 1836 to 1846! Alberta has not had that.

Furthermore, one could argue that Texas has more ability to stand on its own two feet. If Texas seceded from the United States, the newly re-established Lone Star Republic would rank as the country with the 8th-largest GDP, again, larger than all of Canada! The GDP of Texas is 7.7 times larger than that of Alberta, and the population of Texas is 7.3 times larger than that of Alberta too.

Admittedly, the BQ’s dream of an independent Québec relies on a fanciful dream of a day returning to French colonialism. Sure, in Blanchet’s ideal world, Québec would still be independent, but it would rather show subservience to the French Republic instead of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Even with the limitations of the reality of Québécois independence, the Québécois at least have a more coherent case for nationalism and, ultimately, secession as Blanchet argued in contrast to Alberta.

The Feasibility of Albertan Secession

If Alberta seceded from Canada, then Alberta would just become very dependent on the United States. Some people even propose that the U.S. admits Alberta as the 51st state. Again, I usually only see this proposal from American right-wingers. I do not really know how many Canadian citizens in Alberta actually support that proposal, but — in this scenario — Alberta must still subject itself to a new colonial power. I understand that this scenario has a very low chance of occurring in the near future (more specifically, within the next century or two), but it provides a good thought experiment.

In this situation, I would assume that the rift between Albertans and the rest of the more left-wing Canadians has widened. Therefore, I would assume that the ideological and perhaps economic rift widened between Canada and the United States at the larger scale. In a reactionary move, the Americans would happily embrace the Albertans. They might form trade deals. Perhaps the Albertans peg their new currency to the United States dollar as opposed to the Canadian dollar. For all intents and purposes, Alberta would become a vassal state to the United States. Yes, Canada depends very heavily on the United States at the current moment, but Alberta comprises only approximately 12 percent of the entire Canadian population.

An alternate history of a balkanized Canada

Balkanization of Canada?

The Canadians most anxious about the looming threat of the United States fear a more severe scenario. Some fear a balkanized Canada. I still highly doubt either Québec or Alberta will successfully secede in the next century, but — if both of them did secede — then Canada would probably balkanize because of the disparate and awkward geography of Canada. The image above shows a hypothetical balkanized Canada that I found on Google Images.

I will view the Province of Ontario as the nucleus of Canada as both its capital (Ottawa) and largest city (Toronto) are located in Ontario. If Québec seceded, then it would geographically separate Ontario from the four English-speaking Maritime Provinces east of Québec: New Brunswick, Newfoundland/Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. Newfoundland has already had a history of independence anyway. From 1907 to 1934, Newfoundland had dominion status within the United Kingdom just as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand did. This dominion included the mainland region of Labrador, which did not have part of the dominion’s name as the province’s name does today. The map above predicts that Newfoundland would regain independence while the three other Maritime Provinces unite in a “Maritime Union”.

If Alberta secedes, then Alberta would geographically separate Ontario from Canada’s populous Pacific province of British Columbia. Then, British Columbia would secede. This fictional map proposes that the other more right-wing “Prairie Provinces” of Saskatchewan and Manitoba would join Alberta west of them. Alberta would likely have an easier time with absorbing its eastern neighbors of Saskatchewan and Alberta than it western and more left-wing, cosmopolitan neighbor of British Columbia.

Finally, we have the very sparsely populated territories of Yukon, Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories. The territories have much larger populations of First Nations people, and they could declare independence on their own. They likely would not want to join Alberta or British Columbia. In fact, one of the major contentions against Albertan secession is the status of the First Nations peoples within the province. The First Nations play an important part in the politics and unity of Canada. At least, they hold much more political influence on the Canadian government than the Indian tribes do in the United States. I guess that the Canadians just feel more guilty about the historical treatment of the indigenous peoples of North America.

In this most extreme scenario for Canada, all of these balkanized provinces would suffer from Canada’s hegemonic neighbor to the south. The United States would extend its sphere of influence on these much smaller, balkanized states formerly known as Canada. They all would depend way more on the United States than the other newly independent, former Canadian provinces. Québec would try to insulate itself from Anglo-American influence by embracing French nationalism. They might try to become a pseudo-colony of France. If Carney has his way, the most populous province of Ontario might try to strengthen ties with Britain. Of course, all of this is fantastical, but this thought experiment reveals the tenuous nature of Canadian identity in the 21st century.

Final Thoughts

Canada’s future remains murky. We do not know much about Carney yet. He has only served as PM since March 14 and has only had his electoral mandate for two weeks. Beyond his recent arrival to the premiership, he has never held elected office before. He has no track record as former Prime Ministers Justin Trudeau or Stephen Harper did.

On Tuesday, May 6, PM Mark Carney traveled to the U.S. and visited President Donald Trump at the White House. Carney showed deference to the president of the more powerful country. Despite his rhetoric on the campaign trail, Mark Carney has followed the footsteps of other powerful allies to the United States: Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom and President Emmanuel Macron of France.

Many left-wing people in Canada found disappointment in what Carney did with Trump, but what else is he supposed to do? Should Carney have defecated on the floor of the Oval Office and spew expletives at Trump? In all fairness, I understand the frustration. Carney’s lack of aggression toward Trump implies the disingenuous nature of Carney’s rhetoric against Trump and the U.S. during the April election in Canada. Trump said that the Canadians mad e a great choice in electing Carney while Carney gave a very tepid affirmation that Canada is not for sale.

It seemed like Carney was just making this empty comment to appease some people in his base. With his history of bluster and political spectacle, Donald Trump likely understands Carney’s opposition to the U.S. as just rhetoric to win an election. Perhaps Trump even respects it even though the rhetoric attacked Trump and the United States. In a way, Carney’s rhetoric mirrored how Trump bullied Mexico during the 2016 election although Carney did so in a much kinder, more “Canada nice” way — and Carney obviously did not have to speak on illegal immigration from the U.S. to Canada.

Carney’s future as the PM is very much a question mark as he seemingly came out of nowhere. Consequently, Canada’s future very much has a question mark too as opposed to the alternate world of Pierre Poilievre, who had publicly defined himself for three years or so as the Leader of the Opposition against Justin Trudeau. I guess we will just have to wait until the King of Canada descends upon his royal subjects in Ottawa.

1. During the time of the American Revolution, Prince Edward Island had the name of St. John’s Island.