Canadian study worries about 'underanticipated' US civil war—ignores growing resentment at home

If you dig deep into the subterranean internet files of the Canadian government, you might find a link to Policy Horizons Canada – a group that you might surmise is attached to Global Affairs Canada. But no, it is affiliated with the federal public service.

The posting of a recent study titled "Disruptions on the Horizon" might have been missed by the public had an article not been posted to Politico declaring, "Canada's Big Worry: a US Civil War."

There are a lot of worries listed in the 37-page document, with another American Civil War not even making the first top 10 list that is called "Top 10 most likely disruptions." First on this list is "People cannot tell what is true and what is not." That would seem to be a politically correct choice to make, given that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is chronically urging Canadians to avoid misinformation and disinformation on the internet; to only believe the news they see on approved mainstream media; and to calmly accept the introduction of his wildly totalitarian Online Harms Act as something that really is about social media "safety."

Other concerns in the top 10 list are: "Billionaires run the world" and "Mental health is in crisis."

The potential for civil war is mentioned in the next list of 8 "underanticipated disruptions" that "decision makers may need to consider more thoroughly than the survey results indicate."

"Civil war erupts in the United States: US ideological divisions, democratic erosion, and domestic unrest escalate, plunging the country into civil war," the document states.

But this concern might just as easily be described as "Donald Trump is re-elected in the United States" because that is what the Liberal government has been quietly planning for and is most viscerally distressed over when it created a "Team Canada" to work against that prospect. During Trump's presidency, however, Trudeau often prostrated himself before the American leader, even comparing himself to Trump and lauding the efficacy of Trump's policies.

But this report attempts to divert the blame for any US domestic conflict from Trump to the circumstances created by Trump's presidential candidacy. Given the current chaos in American politics – a demented president running for a second term, an open southern border filling the country with illegal immigrants and sex trafficked children, a Democratic-bought judiciary actively seeking to destroy its political opponents – a civil war could potentially occur whether Trump wins re-election or is again denied it.

Whether you believe that the US Civil War was caused by slavery or the increasing economic cleavage between the north and south, it was much easier for the adversaries in that conflict to actually fight each other because there were scores of autonomous state militias in the Southern states that were not controlled by the federal government – unlike the National Guard is today. But the logistics of war has little to do with the potential for it.

The Canadian report does not once mention the potential for a Canadian Civil War, nor the potential for the secession of one or more provinces from Canada due to mounting resentments against a federal government that has its own exclusive agenda that it insists must be applied from coast to coast.

With 70 percent of Canadians saying their country has been "broken" under a Trudeau regime, does that not create a vast source of angry pushback?

Trudeau imposed an authoritarian and violent response to Covid that included invoking martial law to quell a peaceful trucker protest. His government continues to wage war against the fossil fuel industry with "net zero" commitments that are both unrealistic and potentially catastrophic for the economy. The federal government euthanasia program, euphemistically called "Medical Assistance in Dying" continues to expand and is often offered as an alternative to genuine health services. Trudeau promotes gender ideology in the schools while financing the LGBTQ+ agenda. Soup kitchens proliferate in all Canadian cities. The prime minister is strangling free speech.

And there is a lingering concern that the Liberals might declare another national emergency, lockdown the country and postpone the next federal election, scheduled for October 2025. Is this not a recipe for potential civil war or at least Western alienation – where most of the opposition to Trudeau's program resides?

But in Trudeau's Canada, it is always easier to look southward to the United States and focus on the crisis there than for the federal government to look around at the chaos and destruction it has created in its own backyard.