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.<\/p>\n
I do not think Trump\u2019s tariffs need any introduction. In fact, Poorva Sharma and Vasujit Dubey authored<\/a> a very insightful piece about them. However, given that the United States is Canada\u2019s largest trading partner<\/a> and that the two countries are historical allies who have entered<\/a> a free trade agreement, Canadians felt particularly concerned by Trump\u2019s rhetoric, especially his comments about making<\/a> Canada the 51st\u00a0 state.<\/p>\n As a result, Canada-USA relations dominated<\/a> the polls as the most important issue during the election. Despite 2025 being a pivotal year for climate action, as Harsh\u00a0Mahaseth and Aryaman\u00a0Keshav explained<\/a>, Trump\u2019s trade war completely overshadowed<\/a> environmental issues during the elections, despite their importance during the 2021 campaign.<\/p>\n This enabled the Liberal Party, led by Mark Carney \u2013 former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England \u2013 to run a campaign focused<\/a> on the economy (read: tariffs).<\/p>\n However, the most interesting aspect of these elections for me was the discussion about identity that arose from Trump\u2019s expansionist remarks. The more he spoke about annexing Canada, the more politicians<\/a> and public figures<\/a> across the country proclaimed their pride in being Canadian.<\/p>\n At first glance, you would be forgiven to think that Trump\u2019s nonsense has united Canada. After all, polls show<\/a> that \u2018Canadian pride\u2019 is on the rise, even in Quebec<\/a>, a province where the sense of belonging<\/a> and the sense of attachment<\/a> to Canada have always been the lowest in the country, due to complicated (to say the least) relations with the rest of the country.<\/p>\n However, looking at the election results<\/a>, 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<\/a> in the United States. Each side has a different vision of what Canada should be, and certain seem reluctant to coexist<\/a> with those who disagree.<\/p>\n This raises the question: what exactly is<\/em> Canadian identity? Is it simply not being American? Surprisingly, that\u2019s precisely how Justin Trudeau, Carney\u2019s predecessor, defined<\/a> it. This definition focuses on what Canadians are not<\/em>, and is not just a result of the American president\u2019s latest controversial statements, it reflects<\/a> a mindset that has existed for much longer.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s narrative brought the question of Canadian identity to the forefront of people\u2019s minds, and it felt to me as if Canada experienced an identity \u2018crisis\u2019; something I am not too unfamiliar with.<\/p>\n 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 \u2018where are you from?\u2019 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. \u00a0It 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 \u2018where are you from?\u2019 question, I found myself truly confused as to what to answer.<\/p>\n Was I Canadian, Armenian, or even Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois? 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\u2019t need to be one or the other. It can be both \u2018all of the above\u2019, and it<\/em> is<\/em>, because identity is a never-ending process \u2013 organic and dynamic, it grows through our experiences and upbringing, and cannot be reduced to a single thing.<\/p>\n However, identity is increasingly being used<\/a> as a political tool; a means of dividing and excluding people \u00a0by creating an \u2018us\u2019 and a \u2018them\u2019. In a world where even identity is weaponised, spaces like the V\u00f6lkerrechtsblog<\/em> are rare: a place where complexity is welcomed, and contradictions aren\u2019t resolved but explored. Perfect examples of this are Manon Beury and Lena Holzer\u2019s contribution<\/a> on the definition of the term \u2018woman\u2019, Sissy\u00a0Katsoni and Mariana\u00a0Gkliati\u2019s text<\/a> addressing border pushbacks, and Jessica Lynn\u00a0Corsi\u2019s piece<\/a> about binaries of international law.<\/p>\n As Canada grapples with the meaning of its own identity, perhaps it too could benefit from a little more deliberation\u2014and a little less definition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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\u2019s tariffs need any introduction. In fact, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6639],"tags":[],"authors":[7619],"article-categories":[3577],"doi":[],"class_list":["post-25092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","authors-narek-chakhalyan","article-categories-our-own-news"],"acf":{"subline":""},"meta_box":{"doi":"10.17176\/20250627-083156-0"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25092"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25094,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25092\/revisions\/25094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25092"},{"taxonomy":"authors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/authors?post=25092"},{"taxonomy":"article-categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-categories?post=25092"},{"taxonomy":"doi","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/doi?post=25092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}