TORONTO – Before the first two games of the World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays, fans at Rogers Centre witnessed elaborate performances of the American and Canadian national anthems. Game 1 featured a gospel choir, an orchestra, and Pharrell Williams; two female superstars sung before Game 2. What wasn’t present from fans of either team was booing, a far cry from when the Jays played the Mariners in Seattle and the Yankees in New York, and large numbers of fans shouted down the Canadian anthem.
Yet there were moments of boisterousness. When the lyric “free” came up in two places during the Canadian anthem, that single word roared throughout the sold-out stadium. It was a not-so-subtle commentary about how Canadians feel about their country, amid provocations from their southern “cousins.”
President Trump, who has a habit of inserting himself into high-profile athletic events, announced the day before the World Series began that he was ending ongoing trade and tariff negotiations with Canada. The ostensible reason for Trump’s action was a TV ad produced by Ontario’s premier that was broadcast during Blue Jays playoff games. The commercial used the words of Ronald Reagan to discredit both the principle and economic benefit of tariffs. In retaliation, Trump vowed to slap an additional 10 percent tariff on Canada, a move that Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) described as a childish “temper tantrum.”
Trump’s actions were an extension of his provocations against Canada since returning to office, insisting that the nation become the 51st state and that it was responsible for high levels of fentanyl smuggling into the U.S. This has triggered a surge in national pride in Canada and antagonism toward their traditionally friendly neighbor. And it has amped up the energy for the Blue Jays-Dodgers showdown.
Reed Ackland, a general contractor from Niagara Falls, Ontario, was at Friday’s game. Decked out in a Blue Jays jersey and cap, he put the matter succinctly: “President Trump’s tariffs have really increased the animosity between our two countries. Now it’s not just beating the L.A. Dodgers. It’s Canada against the USA.”
AT THE SPORT GALLERY, A WELL-KNOWN Toronto sports clothing store, store manager Mark Scott has already seen a significant decline of exports. “We can’t ship our product to the United States anymore due to the tariffs because it’s too costly for a small business like us,” he said. Many Americans who visit Toronto still shop at the store, but Scott insists that only “certain types” of Americans visit now.
“Most Americans that I see visiting Canada are not supporters of Trump, they are just not,” he said. Trump says that Canada is stealing money from the states or smuggling in fentanyl and that’s just a joke. Americans and Canadians in the past have essentially been cousins or best friends.”
Bill Robson, CEO of the C.D. Howe Institute, a Toronto-based economic think tank, is bewildered by Trump’s approach to Canadian trade. “The kind of aggression that we’re getting from Donald Trump is beyond anything that we’ve seen within our lifetimes, so there’s been a bit of rallying-around-the-flag response. Because of Trump’s unpredictability, there has not been a coherent sense of how to respond economically or politically,” he said. “We’re seeing a real punch to business investment because of the uncertainty and the big winners in all of this from our perspective are going to be the Chinese.”
Canadian approval of U.S. leadership has plummeted to a record low of 15 percent, according to a recent Gallup poll. The popularity of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has gone up as he has pushed back against Trump’s erratic behavior.
So far, the impact of Trump’s tariffs on the Canadian economy has not been drastic. According to economist Jim Stanford, director of the labor-oriented Centre for Future Work, Canada has lost about 3,000 manufacturing jobs since September of last year. But if job losses continue and Canada moves toward a recession, Stanford argues that Canadians must adapt. “Canada has had 15 recessions since we were founded as a country, so a recession itself isn’t the end of the world,” Stanford said. “There will be some adjustment, but Canada has a very strong domestic economy and we have other export markets available. Whatever Trump says this week or next week, we have to realize that we simply cannot trust that relationship anymore.”
Boris Mirtchev, a lobster exporter from Halifax, Nova Scotia, has already moved on. An immigrant from Bulgaria, he has stopped exporting lobsters to the United States and has shifted to the domestic market and to Europe, Dubai, and Singapore. Visiting Toronto for the World Series, Mirtchev laments what is taking place but welcomes the challenge to innovate.
“We are so complementary in terms of our cultures so this is disappointing,” he said. “As Canadians we are peacekeepers, but at the same time we won’t let ourselves be walked on or have the wool pulled over our eyes.”
CANADIAN SOLIDARITY CAN BE SEEN all over Toronto. Every third or fourth person seemed to be wearing a Blue Jays cap or jersey, retail stores have “Proud Canadian” posters taped to the windows, and it’s difficult to find American wine or liquor in restaurants or liquor stores.
The Canadian labor movement is also looking for ways to punch back against the threat of manufacturing jobs leaving Canada at Trump’s insistence or provinces run by the Conservative Party importing Trump’s ideology. The percentage of workers covered by union contacts in Canada is just over 30 percent, more than three times that of the United States, according to Canadian government statistics. About 15 percent of private-sector workers work under union contracts, while over 76 percent of public-sector workers do so. In the United States, less than 6 percent of private-sector workers are unionized, compared with 32 percent of government employees.
Laura Walton, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour, believes that Canadians understand American culture better than Americans grasp Canadian culture. “Even Canadians who don’t understand baseball will be focused on the games because it’s pride that the only Canadian team is in the World Series,” she said. “But it’s really a rich person’s gig because the tickets are so expensive that working-class people can’t participate,” she adds.
But Walton, whose federation represents over a million workers in both the public and private sectors, is as concerned about the ideology that has crossed the border into Canada as she is about the movement of goods and services. “I think in Canada, the idea of sharing with one another is much more common than it is in the United States,” she said. “Maybe it’s our unique history as a thinly populated country but we understand that we need to take care of each other.”
She is not a fan of Doug Ford, the Conservative premier of Ontario province, whose government paid for the TV ad that irritated Trump. “He spent $75 million of taxpayers’ money for an ad when that money should be spent creating jobs for people in Ontario,” she said. She wants Ford and other politicians to make sure that no manufacturing machinery or jobs leave Ontario. “There should not be a single piece of machinery moved out of Ontario to the United States because many of these companies threatening to leave received investments from the Canadian and Ontario government over the years,” she said.
Walton pointed to the union militancy of striking Air Canada flight attendants who defied a government order to return to work and secured a better contract. Stanford also noted that an Amazon warehouse facility was recently organized in Delta, British Columbia. “The rules around certifying the union and then requiring the company to sit and bargain are more amenable to unionization than they are in the United States,” he said.
It took years of fierce political battles to achieve single-payer health care in Canada, which provides free insurance to all Canadians regardless of income. But Walton fears that Trump’s conservative populism might resonate with some Canadians. Before Trump intervened in the Canadian elections through his wildly unpopular comments about taking Canada in as a state, the Conservatives led by proto-Trumper Pierre Poilievre were favored to win. “It’s the working people in both the United States and Canada who are paying the price for these games going on with trade, and we have to fight to stop it,” Walton said.
During the 12 months ending in August, the U.S. lost 93,000 manufacturing jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “About three-quarters of what Canada sells to America are inputs to businesses, rather than finished consumer products,” explained Stanford. “So U.S. businesses are paying more, or they are just not producing those inputs and thus the decline in manufacturing. Ironically, it’s American workers who have been hurt more by these tariffs.”
ROBERT BOTHWELL, A UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO emeritus professor of history, takes a longer view of the U.S.-Canada relationship. At his home in the Summerhill neighborhood of Toronto near the university, he discussed the several periods in U.S. history when Canada was invaded or U.S. politicians and business leaders debated whether to annex Canada.
“Jefferson and Madison, they were veterans of 1776, so from their point of view it was just natural for all of North America to be united,” he said. The city of York, later renamed Toronto, was invaded by American troops in 1813, looting stores and burning the parliament building. Canada was seen as a security threat, Bothwell explained. The following year, the British invaded Washington, D.C., and returned the favor. “The Americans couldn’t conquer Canada and the British didn’t want to give it up.”
Bothwell agrees that the Blue Jays, who split the two games in Toronto and play Game 3 in Los Angeles tonight, are now Canada’s team, forged out of Trump’s thin skin, which engendered the current economic and political turmoil. If Canadians in Vancouver occasionally identified with the Seattle Mariners and those in the Maritime Provinces in eastern Canada embraced the Boston Red Sox, they are all behind the Blue Jays now.
“We are now united politically and spiritually behind the team,” Bothwell said. “It’s not just that Trump canceled the trade talks which you could cloak in bureaucratic language, but it’s the abusive way that he did it that gives it that extra twist that makes people angry.”