Online polls this week showed a very rapid and extreme shift in whether readers saw the United States as Canada's ally.
Some 83 per cent said that they would have thought of the U.S. as an ally a year ago, while only 32 per cent said they would still think the same way now.
Newly re-elected U.S. president Donald Trump has made many references to wanting to annex Canada since mid-January, a prospect that has alarmed many Canadians and may be having a transformative effect on the polls leading up to the next federal election.
Over two-thirds of readers who said they would have thought of the U.S. as an ally a year ago would not now.
Only 20% of women now think of the U.S. as an ally:
There are a couple of ways of reading the age graph. A defensible one is that readers over 40 are fairly consistent:
The partisan breakdown is more or less what might be expected. It's notable, though, that a modest majority of Conservatives no longer see the U.S. as an ally:
There is a strong connection to views on Ukraine:
Whether readers expected Canada to join the U.S. in their lifetimes:
And views of Pierre Poilievre. Notably, even among the 'very favourable' group there's a close to even split:
And views of Donald Trump's second presidency. The quarter or so of readers who are (or were) very happy about Trump's reelection who also say that the U.S. is no longer an ally are worth thinking about. It's possible that this reflects a shift in opinion: the Trump-related poll was posted just after the U.S. election, in November.
Now, we turn to this week's extra polls.
Toronto writer Patricia Treble, whose Substack focuses on the monarchy, made a case recently that King Charles should speak up for Canada in the face of U.S. bullying.
"In the face of an existential threat from Trump, anything less than a full-throated defence of Canada and its sovereignty by the King of Canada will be seen as a betrayal by the people of Canada," she wrote.
(She frames this in the context of a royal visit planned for 2026, which I guess allows any necessary time for deliberation.)
Many will remember that Charles's coronation featured a number of prayers and oaths: one involved him being given a sword by the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, who prayed that he " ... may not bear the sword in vain; but may use it as the minister of God to resist evil and defend the good."
With this sort of thing generally in mind, we asked you how you would feel about the monarchy if Charles spoke out about Canada and Trump.
Basically it would seem that readers who already want to keep the monarchy (about 60%) say they would be more likely to want to keep it if Charles spoke out, and vice versa. There is, however, a small margin who say they would vote for a republic as things stand now, but would be more likely to support keeping the monarchy if Charles were to make some kind of statement.