Would you die for Canada? Polling suggests Canadians are more willing to fight for their country

Globe and Mail

16 hours ago

Thomas Homer-Dixon is the executive director of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University. Toby Shannan is a technology entrepreneur.
Is Canada a real country?
One might have doubts if the key metric of nationhood is a well-formed national identity. More than 60 years ago, media guru Marshall McLuhan declared that 'Canada is the only country in the world that knows how to live without an identity.' And in 2015, prime minister Justin Trudeau famously agreed. Our country was the 'first postnational state,' he told The New York Times Magazine, because 'there is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada.'
But maybe that's not the right metric. Instead, maybe what matters is not what Canadians think Canada is, but whether they're prepared to defend whatever they believe the country to be.
If so, we can now put the doubts to rest. According to recent polling, a large proportion of Canadians say they're willing to fight to protect our country.
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The Cascade Institute commissioned Environics, a firm with deep experienced surveying people's values, to conduct an online poll of more than 2,000 Canadians to gauge their willingness to defend Canada against military attack. The poll was fielded in April and respondents were sampled and weighted to represent Canada's regional, linguistic, demographic and socio-economic diversity.
We asked, first, 'What actions would you take, if any, to fight to defend Canada against a military attack and invasion or occupation by a hostile foreign power?' More than 72 per cent of respondents said they'd take at least some action given a list of alternatives, with about 26 per cent willing to volunteer for civil defence and 13 per cent willing to volunteer for military service.
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If Canada were defeated and occupied by another country, more than half of those polled said they'd undertake some kind of resistance, including nearly 39 per cent who'd participate in non-violent protests, economic disruption and civil disobedience. And almost 15 per cent would 'engage in violent resistance.'
In a total population of 41.5 million, that latter percentage represents nearly five million adults. If we assume only half of these adults would follow through and, of that portion, only half would be sufficiently able-bodied, we're still left with an insurgency of 1.2 million people. To put this figure in perspective, at its peak, Afghanistan's Taliban insurgency consisted of only 100,000 fighters.
A particularly striking poll result was that 16 per cent of Canadians were 'absolutely' prepared to die defending Canada, and an additional 22 per cent were prepared to die 'depending on the circumstances.' This total of 38 per cent represents more than 12 million people. Members of any Canadian insurgency fighting a military occupation would therefore have a vast supporting population into which they could vanish to sustain their fight.
Importantly, we were careful not to identify a potential aggressor until the poll's conclusion, when we asked about the perceived likelihood of military attack on Canada – in the next five years – by Russia, China and the United States.
By substantial margins, respondents perceived the U.S. as the most likely aggressor. Forty-three per cent said such an attack was at least somewhat likely, with 10 per cent judging it to be highly likely or certain.
What made this result astonishing was that nearly 60 per cent of respondents also reported having friends or relatives in the United States. Indeed, rather than producing a moderating effect, having these links was associated in our poll with a greater willingness to defend Canada.
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In the weeks before we conducted the poll, U.S. President Donald Trump had repeatedly said he wanted to make Canada the '51st state.' As Mr. Trump has talked less about annexation since then, Canadians' fears have likely subsided, so a lower percentage would answer the same way today. Still, we can reasonably surmise that just a year ago only a per cent or two of Canadians would have said a U.S. military attack was somewhat likely within five years. Mr. Trump has clearly caused an enormous swing in Canadian views on this matter in a very short period.
But there's a silver lining because, as Prime Minister Mark Carney has recently acknowledged, the President is correct in saying that Canada has been free-riding on U.S. security guarantees. Our newfound patriotism can be a corrective. If we now recognize we're a real country worth defending, the implication is that we want to be good allies again – and dangerous enemies to bad actors.