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Front Burner Transcript for February 18, 2025

Host: Jayme Poisson

JAYME POISSON: Hey, I'm Jayme Poisson.

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: So I think Canada is going to be a very serious contender to be our 51st state.

DONALD TRUMP: What I'd like to see: Canada become our 51st state.

DONALD TRUMP: I think Canada would be much better off being a 51st state.

JP: So Donald Trump has made it clear. He says that he's serious about this. His deputy chief of staff says that Trump has made no concessions on the topic. And Prime Minister Trudeau says that the threat is a real thing. As you know, Trump says that he would use economic force to drag this country under America's boot. He's been less delicate about other places, saying Greenland and the Panama Canal could come under U.S. control at gunpoint. I want to read you something from the National Post last week. It's by Canada's former vice chief of the defence staff, Mark Norman. Quote: "In this emerging reality, are we as Canadians any different than Ukraine is to Russia or Taiwan to China? We need not like, or even agree with this possibility, but we had best acknowledge and understand it." Today, we're going to try and do exactly that: understand what a potential, and yes, theoretical, takeover could look like. One that could include tariffs, but also boots on the ground. Howard Coombs is going to take us through a military thought experiment that I can safely say nobody here wants to see happen. And while Coombs says that the chances are slim, I found that gaming it out like this really sobered me to the challenges that Canada is up against right now. Coombs is the director of the Queen's Centre for International and Defence Policy. He's also a retired member of the Canadian Armed Forces and was deployed as a civilian counterinsurgency advisor in Afghanistan, where, of course, Canadians fought and died alongside our U.S. allies at the time.

[Music: Theme]

JP: Howard, hi. Thank you so much for coming onto Front Burner.

HOWARD COOMBS: Thank you very much for having me.

JP: So, look, a U.S. military invasion is obviously very theoretical here, and I think, very fair to say, an incredibly remote possibility. But how remote a possibility do you think it is at the moment? Like, do you think this could actually happen?

HOWARD COOMBS: In terms of a U.S., a U.S. military offensive against Canada, the chances I think of it occurring are slim at the most. If we look at what's happening right now between Canada and the United States, the frictions that are happening, which are quite... which are new to us since the Second World War, but uh, these frictions occurred prior to the Second World War. And in the, really, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the U.S. was seen as an invader and a-- or an oppositional force. [JP: Mm-hmm] We have U.S. invasions during the American Revolution. The War of 1812, there was fighting back and forth across the Canadian border. After the American Civil War, we have disaffected Irish soldiers known as Fenians who invade. And um. And in fact, in the post-Second-- post-First World War period, we had our own war plans. Defence Scheme 1, which was to... a pre-emptive Canadian strike against U.S. hostilities. And the Americans had their own plan called War Plan Red. With the Second World War, we became very close allies, and that wartime alliance has turned since the Second World War into something much stronger, [JP: Yeah.] or much more intertwined across our borders in terms of everything from culture to economics. And I think that's where we're-- the, the biggest issue we're seeing right now is there is a form of warfare that is not military power being conducted, but more so on the economic realm. I would argue that right now the United States is at war with us, and they're using the, their economic instrument of power to gain whatever objectives that they've set for themselves. But if they could not achieve what they wanted through dialogue, discourse, threats, coercion, then that possibility of a military invasion could possibly occur.

JP: Right. Okay, Howard. Um. That's very disconcerting to hear. With the caveat that this is a very slim possibility, I do want to talk about how this could play out step by step here, right. Like if the U.S. invaded Canada, what is the first thing that they would do?

HOWARD COOMBS: Well, if the U.S. did decide to invade Canada, their... I think it would actually, in terms of physical movement, their objectives would mirror their, believe it or not, their 1920s war plan, [unclear]. Which is actually, for anybody who wants to take a look at it on Wikipedia, it's actually a great rendition of the plan. But the United States saw breaking-- splitting up Canada into three broad fronts: western, central and eastern. Splitting main parts of Can-- isolating parts of Canada. And that that land offensive, combined land and air and sea offensive, would capture major Canadian cities that had relevance to either communications, transportation, governance. Like Vancouver, Winnipeg, Montreal, Ottawa, Halifax, Quebec City. Major cities. Where they, by isolating population centres, taking over communications hubs, transport centres, or major ports in the case of the 1920s for Vancouver and Halifax, they could see us breaking up Canada and separating the different pieces that could actually reinforce each other and support each other, and therefore fragmenting the opposition -- which would be us -- and the population centres. In a similar fashion, [JP: Yeah.] I could see that happening today. But I think because... although war, the essence of conflict, the violence, the friction, the human factors have not changed, but the technology around conflict has. You look at the U.S. army. Just the army, for example. Between their National Guard Reserve and active duty forces, they can muster, muster a million under arms.

JP: Right.

HOWARD COOMBS: You know, as compared with our all-in of about 60K, maybe, on a good day. And our forces are nowhere near as robustly structured as theirs are.

JP: So what would it look like? Do we see tanks roll in from the borders? Is this coming from the air? Are they bringing down our telecom and transportation systems?

HOWARD COOMBS: The organization of such an offensive into Canada would have different layers, I guess is the right word, depending-- from its opening stages to the main course attacks. And I would say that we would first see things that are information types of warfare: computer network attack, maybe physical attack against vital communication centres and vital infrastructure that would be necessary to-- for Canadians to coordinate a response. I think the overriding thing we have to keep in the back of our minds is any American efforts in this regard, they would want to minimize. I think -- I hope, one would hope, one would believe -- they would want to minimize Canadian casualties and minimize Canadian damage to Canadian infrastructure. Because the hope would be that at some point this would be up and running again. The things that are necessary to make Canada work as a nation, the physical infrastructure, could be easily repaired and brought back up online and then the country could be functioning again, albeit under a different governance structure, I would assume. And as well, you don't want a disaffected Canadian population. And honestly, this is, these are the types of rules of engagement that we, in amongst the NATO allies, used in places like Afghanistan. We had very strict rules about what types of munitions could be used around population centres, and when we could and couldn't use them in terms of the potential civilian casualties that they could cause. So this isn't... [JP: Yeah.] The processes here aren't new, and neither are the means. So we're actually seeing the things that we saw used in the Middle East over the last 20 years, would be used against us. So the precision strikes to start off, paralyzing our ability to govern, communicate, coordinate. And I think also you would see special operations used to a significant degree. And I would also highlight right here the United States Special Operations Command, which is combin-- coordinates the activities of all special operations forces in the U.S. military, be it army, navy, air force, etc. Their Special Operations Command is almost as large as the Canadian Forces. So the Canadian Armed Forces, in its entirety, is... is about, person for person, the size of special ops in the United States. So that kind of gives you an idea of the dimension of the problem for us as Canadians, a military problem. [JP: Mm-hmm.] We can really, we can pose some resistance if we can organize and communicate and self-prepare. But at the end of the day, we would be overwhelmed.

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JP: Can you just flesh out for me some more historical comparisons here from around the world for what kind of takeover and occ-- yeah, occupation this might look like?

HOWARD COOMBS: I think if we look at the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, they did something which I would suspect the Americans did: precision attacks, special operations. Going into key centres, taking key members of the government hostage, paralyzing operations, and then follow up with a ground attack. So that-- And they, the Russians, were very successful with moving into Afghanistan in 1979. However, one could also argue that the keeping the peace in Afghanistan was-- became very difficult for them, which resulted in their withdrawal in 1989. Now, what's interesting-- [CROSS-TALK]

JP: Right, but--

HOWARD COOMBS: Alright, go ahead.

JP: Fair to say, would it be fair for me to say that the Mujahideen, who led that charge against the Soviets... I don't know if there's a parallel here with Canadians.

HOWARD COOMBS: So could we have a... I think if we want to think about the idea of a homegrown insurgency, I actually believe it would be very limited. It's... it's simplistic in a way to say that everybody would fight for Canadian sovereignty and for our Canadian way of life. I think the reality is if the United States did a physical invasion and they had-- there were minimal casualties and infrastructure damage and it was accomplished fairly quickly, that the desire to fight them would be very low. I believe if we look at it again, and we look at the Second World War, the Netherlands -- there's a great museum in Amsterdam. It looks at... It examines three groups-- the population, it divides the population into three groups. It says it looks at those that resisted, those that did nothing, and those that cooperated with the German occupiers, and examines the motivations for each. And it really talks about the resistors were a very small group. Because although they were supported from outside, the potential consequences for oneself and one family are extreme. So they had to really believe that the end goal of resisting the German occupier would be a, would be a free and functioning sovereign Netherlands. But many people just didn't want to become involved. They were just... they just went with the flow. The reality is, and if we can look at-- we can look across Europe. People that actively fought German occupiers in the Second World War, those groups... although in hindsight, we'd like to think that, you know, they were widespread, they weren't. And they received a lot of outside assistance. So, and that's the other thing that we would not have. If Canadians--

JP: But -- yeah.

HOWARD COOMBS: Yeah, sorry.

JP: Before we go there, tell me more, though, about... I don't know, are we talking about like Vichy France or Britain's Shetlands Isl-- Shetland Island? Yeah.

HOWARD COOMBS: Yeah. No, that's a, it's a good point. So occupying governments, we have in Norway, for example. There's a great Netflix movie out right now. I think it's called 24. It talks about the Norwegian resistance [JP: Yeah.] and the Norwegian collaborative government and how they were, they were completely twinned with the German occupiers. We see the same thing in Vichy France, a section of France that the Germans at first didn't occupy. They set up a, a [unclear] government under a Marshal Pétain. The Channel Islands, for example, which were ta-- which were captured by the Germans. The British administration stayed in place, and the policing systems and administrative systems worked alongside the German occupiers for the bulk of the war. So the precedents on a European-- from a European perspective are there. And I don't think it'd be any different in Canada. The parts of the government that couldn't be co-opted would be replaced. And if we even look at the British example, you know, colonial India. The colonial governments are are the British [unclear]. The Canadian government, set up by the British, had benevolent rule by, by the British governor general until the Treaty of Westminster in 1931. You know, we're... we, we had that relationship with Imperial England. They had a... You know, we were a client government as part of the Dominions. So -- until we were given self-governance in '31. So this is, it's not a new thing.

JP: Okay, but there is... [laughs] not to mount a case for Canadians to mount an insurgency against a U.S. occupying force. But I guess, suppose if I were to do that intellectual exercise. There is, you know, some history of armed resistance movements here, like the FLQ in Quebec in the '60s.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER: First known as L'Armée de Liberation Quebecois, they introduced terrorism to Canadians with painted slogans and Molotov cocktails. Then they graduated to dynamite time bombs -- homemade, crude, but deadly. The terrorist targets were symbols of anything Anglo-Saxon or federal.

JP: The Mohawk of Kanesatake.

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NEWS PRESENTER: They were trying to prevent the town from expanding a 9-hole golf course on what they claim is ancestral land. Tonight, the barricade is completely surrounded by the Canadian army. The soldiers have dug themselves in after a day of high tension and drama.

KANESATAKE SPEAKER: I must be number one on your list, eh? Well, you're number one on my list, too.

REPORTER 2: Little bit nervous perhaps? Do you think? ...Are you nervous?

JP: There are militia groups in Alberta. There are a lot of guns here. People own a lot of guns. You know, is there any case that we can put up a good fight?

HOWARD COOMBS: Well, I would say we-- people could put up some degree of resistance. I'm not saying that that would not happen, but sustaining it over time is very difficult without outside support. Because you need a constant influx of arms, weapons, explosives, munitions of all kind. We're talking, we're talking an enemy that's high tech. We could use low-tech measures just like the Afghans did against us. For example, the Afghan insurgents. But the, but the reality is without that outside support, you will not have a successful insurgency.

JP: Right. I mean, if we're looking at like the Viet Cong, um, they succeeded against the U.S., but obviously they had a huge outside backer. The Algerian National Front beat the French. The Irish Republican Army against the British.

HOWARD COOMBS: Yep.

JP: Does that all hold for you? Yeah.

HOWARD COOMBS: Yeah, [JP: Okay, okay.] so that's correct. So they all had outside support, but the other thing too is porous borders with a neighbour that you can move into. If you look-- Our border is with the U.S. So, little support there. If we go up north and, you know, and try-- and we look at our bordering the Arctic, you know, the Arctic Council countries, there's... well, I'd be shocked if somebody could think of a viable way in which we could move stuff across the Arctic Circle and down into southern Canada. So that's a problem, too.

JP: Why -- Yeah. Why wouldn't we have friends or backers? Why not?

HOWARD COOMBS: It's easy to send a plane and do something, but projecting and sustaining support over time, over vast distances, it consumes huge amounts of resources. And we don't have any neighbouring countries that are able to easily support us, or to be used as a support base for allies that can negotiate with them to support Canada. That's the biggest problem. If we look at our closest European ally is the U.K. Like so how would... in terms of an intellectual exercise, how would the U.K. support an act of resistance unit in Canada? How could they support that movement? And I can't think of a way that's sustainable. I can think of, you know, sub drops, perhaps strategic aircraft. But let's face it, NORAD is very effective. So the architecture of sea and air defence from a continental perspective is in place. So if you're going to try to put a plane in the air to do an air drop in Canada, chances are it's not going to get there. If you try to move a sub into the offshore of Canada, you are taking your chances because we have very effective coastline surveillance. So I think... the fact is, Canada is a bit of a castle with a moat around it in terms of if we-- if somebody wanted to actually defend Canada and had the military wherewithal to do it.

JP: Right. Because I was going to ask you if NATO would be obligated, but that's not really your point. Your point is that they care, do it.

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JP: Okay, look, I know you said at the beginning of this conversation that you thought the more likely outcome -- I'm still not saying that this is the likely outcome, but the more likely outcome -- is really extreme economic warfare, right? I know you said you actually already think that we are at war with the U.S. Just worst-case scenario that for me. I guess, is there a scenario where Canada ends up in like a Venezuela-type situation, where all of the economic force just causes a huge level of social and economic chaos here internally?

HOWARD COOMBS: I think it could. But I don't believe that in terms of economic resistance, um... I think there's a point when we would stop. We would just say, okay, what is this going to take to come to some kind of agreement? I would see us being a client state. The United States has done this before. Against the Philippines, for example. And they have that kind of relationship with the client state -- exchange of goods, staples for refined goods. In some cases, you know, they would use American currency. So I won't say we would become a colony of the U.S., but I could see some kind of transactional relationship. Because at the end of the day, the United States doesn't need to physically invade us to dominate us. And we're already seeing this with the unrest and uncertainty that's being caused by the pronouncements that are coming out of the current U.S. administration. And honestly, we are in a state of disarray right now. Our government is not effectively reacting. In terms of central resistance on an economic front, it doesn't seem like, at least from somebody on the outside, and I... I would like to be giving everybody the benefit of the doubt in thinking that right now, furiously in Ottawa, there are federal government ministers and... trying to knit together a, you know, what does a, what does an immediate response look like, and what are long-term plans? But in my heart, I don't think that's happening. But-- And we have no effective military response left. We don't have the capabilities anymore. We have... we have, for example, we have no air defence capability left in Canada. We have almost no tanks left in Canada. We have almost no artillery left in Canada. So a military response to an incursion by U.S. forces is... is not, is not likely, honestly. And if we could organize and get mobilized quickly enough to put those forces out, they have very limited capabilities as [of] today. So they, they really couldn't mount an effective resistance. They would be... they would be more sacrificial than not, to be quite honest.

JP: Howard, I know there's kind of no shortage of people who have thoughts on the off ramps here, right? Like how to stop this from happening. But I'm, I'm curious, like, what you think we could do.

HOWARD COOMBS: I'll predicate my remarks by saying I'm... You know, I study war and I'm an historian, so I'm not a political scientist or an economist. But I do know whatever course that we do that's effective, is going to have an economic cost and a... and it's going to be a burden on the population. So I believe -- you know, Howard Coombs, the guy sitting here in Kingston right now, looking at historical examples -- we need to start thinking about what it means to be independent and sovereign, and then doing the things that it takes to be a sovereign nation. We need to start encouraging home, home industries. We need to start re-establishing our industrial base for many things, and our high tech sectors, because a lot of it has now been farmed out to the U.S. We need to reinvest in Canada as a nation. And we need to start looking -- right away we should be looking at other allies who would be- who are not the United States. But I think it's doable because we look at the Finns in the Soviet diaspora and after the Second World War. They were able to do it. Oh, go ahead, sorry.

JP: No, I was just saying, do you think part of that is investing more in our military? And what would you say to somebody who thinks that that's just not where our priorities should be?

HOWARD COOMBS: I would say it's more than that. Our military right now is at such a low capability. We could throw... we could throw money at it like there's no tomorrow and it wouldn't change much, quite frankly. What we need to invest in is a robust military. That means we need to recruit, educate, train people, and equip them for-- start planning on equipping a military that has capabilities across the spectrum of conflict. I'm not talking a huge military, but one that's technologically enabled, and has enough ground troops and naval forces as well as air forces to actually be a deterrent and help protect our borders. That's not an overnight project. We are now isolated in the world over the last decade or so. We have minimized ourselves on the interna-- in the international front, so those... those alliances that were part of our [JP: Mm-hmm.] our Cold War strategy, they don't really exist anymore. You know, all kidding aside, we have to, you know, pull up our pants and we have to go out there and activate our voice in the world -- become the middle power we used to be. Today we need an integrated strategy, because the conflict area in which we're now fighting is international in nature. It's not just in Canada. And it encompasses a whole range of areas: across diplomatic areas, the information environment, the military environment. And for God's sake, we all have to recognize this: economics. So anyway, that's my polemic. I don't know if any of that was useful, but that's kind of my musings on the topic right now.

JP: It was useful and interesting, and I would also say equal parts disconcerting. Howard, I really want to thank you for this. It was really, it was, it was great to talk to you.

HOWARD COOMBS: Thank you very much. I enjoyed our conversation.

[Music: Theme]

JP: All right, that is all for today. I'm Jayme Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.

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What if the U.S. invaded Canada? - Transcript

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