Editorial #45: Reflection on Identity in Light of the Canadian Elections

On 28 April 2025, Canadians made their way to the urns to elect their next government. Despite the many crises that Canadian society faces, such as the housing crisis, the cost-of-living crisis, and environmental issues, the election campaign revolved around one thing: Donald Trump.

I do not think Trump’s tariffs need any introduction. In fact, Poorva Sharma and Vasujit Dubey authored a very insightful piece about them. However, given that the United States is Canada’s largest trading partner and that the two countries are historical allies who have entered a free trade agreement, Canadians felt particularly concerned by Trump’s rhetoric, especially his comments about making Canada the 51st  state.

As a result, Canada-USA relations dominated the polls as the most important issue during the election. Despite 2025 being a pivotal year for climate action, as Harsh Mahaseth and Aryaman Keshav explained, Trump’s trade war completely overshadowed environmental issues during the elections, despite their importance during the 2021 campaign.

This enabled the Liberal Party, led by Mark Carney – former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England – to run a campaign focused on the economy (read: tariffs).

However, the most interesting aspect of these elections for me was the discussion about identity that arose from Trump’s expansionist remarks. The more he spoke about annexing Canada, the more politicians and public figures across the country proclaimed their pride in being Canadian.

At first glance, you would be forgiven to think that Trump’s nonsense has united Canada. After all, polls show that ‘Canadian pride’ is on the rise, even in Quebec, a province where the sense of belonging and the sense of attachment to Canada have always been the lowest in the country, due to complicated (to say the least) relations with the rest of the country.

However, looking at the election results, I see a country more divided than ever. It feels as if Canadians are becoming more entrenched and polarized in their political views, akin to what is being seen in the United States. Each side has a different vision of what Canada should be, and certain seem reluctant to coexist with those who disagree.

This raises the question: what exactly is Canadian identity? Is it simply not being American? Surprisingly, that’s precisely how Justin Trudeau, Carney’s predecessor, defined it. This definition focuses on what Canadians are not, and is not just a result of the American president’s latest controversial statements, it reflects a mindset that has existed for much longer.

Trump’s narrative brought the question of Canadian identity to the forefront of people’s minds, and it felt to me as if Canada experienced an identity ‘crisis’; something I am not too unfamiliar with.

I have often reflected on my own identity. Although I was born in Armenia, I have lived in Montreal since the age of three. Having been raised as a proud Armenian, the answer to ‘where are you from?’ was always clear in my mind. Or so I thought, until people in Armenia started asking me the same question. For them, I was from Canada.  It was at this point that I first started to question myself about my identity, a process that began in my early teens and culminated when I moved to Amsterdam for my LL.M. There, when confronted with the ‘where are you from?’ question, I found myself truly confused as to what to answer.

Was I Canadian, Armenian, or even Québécois? After my one-and-a-half-year stay in the Netherlands, what I realised was that all of these options were true, and yet false at the same time. After more than a decade of self-questioning, I came to understand that my identity doesn’t need to be one or the other. It can be both ‘all of the above’, and it is, because identity is a never-ending process – organic and dynamic, it grows through our experiences and upbringing, and cannot be reduced to a single thing.

However, identity is increasingly being used as a political tool; a means of dividing and excluding people  by creating an ‘us’ and a ‘them’. In a world where even identity is weaponised, spaces like the Völkerrechtsblog are rare: a place where complexity is welcomed, and contradictions aren’t resolved but explored. Perfect examples of this are Manon Beury and Lena Holzer’s contribution on the definition of the term ‘woman’, Sissy Katsoni and Mariana Gkliati’s text addressing border pushbacks, and Jessica Lynn Corsi’s piece about binaries of international law.

As Canada grapples with the meaning of its own identity, perhaps it too could benefit from a little more deliberation—and a little less definition.