In the summer of 2024, I was sitting on the lawn outside the dining hall at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, in southwestern Germany. While speaking to some fellow students at a club fair, I encountered a perplexing question: when is Canada joining the European Union?
My initial reaction was one of humour. Clearly, this was a question borne out of a misunderstanding of Canada’s self-identity and place in the world. My interlocutors, however, were quite earnest. Why wouldn’t Canada, a fellow Western democracy that defined itself in different terms to the United States, join the European Union, which shared its values and priorities? The students in question, two Germans and a Luxembourger, expressed a deep-seated disdain for the United States and wondered why a country which seemed to share this view would not join the European project. Canada’s accession would be desirable for young Europeans too, so they said: they wanted to experience North American city life and the vast expanse of a continental country, without going to the United States.
I came away from that conversation disquieted. The version of Canada my fellow students had put forward was not something I recognized, and their genuine anti-American zeal came off as unfounded. This conversation, of course, predated Donald Trump’s return to the White House and his subsequent trade war, annexation threats, and general anti-Canadian obsession. Since then, this idea of Canada joining, or at least developing much closer ties to, the European Union has become a mainstream part of Canadian public discourse, finding expression in the highest levels of our government. It is, after all, the prudent thing to do when your foremost ally and largest neighbour turns into something ugly and unrecognizable. It is a sentiment with which I fully identified, as part of my own emotional response to my country coming under threat.
Yet, if we return for a moment to 2024, I believe many Canadians in my position would have felt the same way. We are a North American country. Many of us have deep familial, cultural, and social ties to the United States. While our political outlooks and national stories fundamentally differ, I think it would have been uncontroversial, even trite to say in 2024 that the United States is the country that has the most in common with Canada.
So, what has changed in Canada between 2024 and now?
I. Enemy, Friend, and Stranger
Allow me to indulge in some self-exposition. Between 2022 and 2026, I studied international relations and German studies as an undergraduate at the University of Toronto. Of the seventy-odd students in my graduating class in international relations, I was only one of two students who had simultaneously pursued German studies as a major. This made me something of an oddity, and my motivation for studying German—a genuine interest in German politics, history, and culture—was often treated as a fanciful, romantic notion by my colleagues, who considered it a largely irrelevant pursuit for a serious career in policy.
In my final year, however, these voices suddenly became much quieter. Since Mark Carney declared a “rupture” in the hitherto American-led liberal international order in January 2026 at Davos, many Canadians have come to accept the premise that we are indeed the most European country outside of Europe. Furthermore, growing segments of the citizenry (70 percent according to Léger and 79 percent according to Nanos) and commentariat now see integration with Europe as a desirable objective, though the ultimate form of that integration is often left undefined. Almost as an instinctual response, we looked across the Atlantic to try and find consolation. This instinct lays bare how the lack of cultural understanding that causes Europeans to project their values, priorities, and outlooks onto Canada cuts both ways. We looked to Europe because we thought we were identical and compatible, without fully understanding what the implications of a prospective ever-closer union would be.
This is where Germany becomes relevant again. Germany is the most consequential European country about which the Canadian public knows the least. Germany is visible in Canada. From Mercedes-Benz SUVs to bookstore shelves stacked with volumes on the country’s tragic twentieth-century history, it is undeniable that Germany has a presence in Canadian everyday life. Few Canadians, however, would be able to tell you about the stories behind these symbols.
A decently informed Canadian will be able to tell you who the British prime minister is and who his numerous immediate predecessors were. She might also be able to tell you who the President of France and his recurring right-wing populist challenger is. But she would likely not know anything about the two men who have led Germany since Angela Merkel’s retirement in 2021. Westminster or the Élysée Palace might be familiar metonyms for politically minded Canadians, but fewer would know anything about the history and customs of the Bundestag.
Your average Canadian would probably know something about the stereotypical traits associated with each of the countries of the British Isles, or Parisian snobbery versus rustic rural French authenticity. But he would not be able to distinguish Bavarian customs or cuisine from those of Saxony or Switzerland. Urbane Canadians can easily find a pint of ale or a well-made bouillabaisse, yet white asparagus and Käsespätzle are utterly alien to our palates. A Canadian consumer might have vague notions that German consumer goods tend to be of a superior quality but would not be able to explain the nature of the German Mittelstand companies which have, over centuries, built this reputation. To be sure, these may seem trifling matters, but this cultural context is essential for forming any kind of intercultural working relationship.
None of this is to imply that Canadians are at fault for not caring about the German-speaking world. German culture and politics are simply less accessible to the Canadian public. According to the 2021 Census, approximately 419,000 Canadians could conduct a conversation in German. German speakers are also considerably older than the Canadian population at large, with a median age of fifty-five compared to forty-one nationally. The language's use in Canadian households has been declining, reflecting its increasingly tenuous place in everyday Canadian life.
Canada maintained a permanent military presence in Germany from the 1950s until 1994, including at CFB Lahr, a base near the sleepy town on the edge of the Black Forest, not far from Freiburg. Although the size of this presence fluctuated considerably according to competing government priorities, it afforded a small group of Canadians and Germans a unique opportunity to live alongside one another, forge local connections, and develop a deeper understanding of each other’s societies. With Canadian service members often accompanied by their families, these deployments fostered enduring personal and cultural ties that extended well beyond the military relationship.
Today, relatively few Canadians maintain active personal ties to the German-speaking world, whether through family, professional connections, or educational pursuits. This is all the more remarkable given the considerable historical presence of German immigrants in Canada. Though German immigration to Canada never reached the scale or breadth it did in the United States, German-speaking “Foreign Protestants” helped settle Nova Scotia in the eighteenth century, while successive waves of immigration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries established substantial German communities in Ontario and across the Prairies.
Canada’s wartime leader, Mackenzie King was born in Berlin, Ontario, a city whose German heritage was so deeply rooted that its renaming as Kitchener in 1916, amid the anti-German fervour of the First World War, represented a profound rupture with its past. (King would later report the fact of his Berlin birth to Adolf Hitler during the prime minister’s ill-conceived 1937 diplomatic trip to the Third Reich.) The two World Wars cast Germany in a largely adversarial role in Canada's national story, making the public expression of German identity increasingly suspect. John Diefenbaker, born in Neustadt, Ontario, to a father from Baden, was our first prime minister with neither an Anglo-Celtic nor a French surname. Yet his Germanness never formed any substantial part of his public identity as a postwar politician. Combined with successive generations of cultural assimilation, this legacy has gradually diminished the visibility of German-Canadian identity. Nearly three million Canadians still report German ancestry, yet this substantial demographic inheritance has left a surprisingly faint imprint on Canada’s contemporary cultural and political imagination.
For a country that seeks to integrate itself further into Europe than any non-European country ever has, this can be a problem. Germany is the leading economy in the EU and its most populous state, often treated as the de facto leader of the EU, a status which earns it much chagrin from the EU’s less economically powerful members. Germany is Canada’s biggest trading partner in the EU and has been selected to supply our next submarine fleet. If we are to genuinely forge ever-closer ties with our transatlantic partners, Canada and Canadians must do more to learn more about Germany.
II. Comparative Nationalisms and Federalisms
What might German culture and politics have to offer Canada, and what might Canadians offer in return? Germany’s long struggle with Vergangenheitsbewältigung—coming to terms with its Nazi past—has produced one of the most extensive cultures of historical remembrance in the democratic world. Over the past decade and a half, Canada has undertaken a profound historical reckoning of its own. From the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to the renewed national reckoning over residential schools after 2021, Canadians have been compelled to confront historical injustices and reconsider the moral foundations of their national story.
The challenge now facing both democracies is how to reconcile this responsibility toward the past with the need to sustain a confident, constructive, and forward-looking national identity. Historical wrongs must be acknowledged and their consequences addressed, but a democratic society must also provide its citizens with reasons to take pride in their country and invest in its future. Germany’s experience is instructive, though by no means definitive. The resurgence of the far right, exemplified by the Alternative für Deutschland doubling its share of the federal vote between 2021 and 2025, demonstrates that even an exceptionally developed culture of remembrance offers no guarantee against the revival of reactionary nationalism. Nor can the legitimate desire for national belonging be left to those who would rehabilitate the darkest chapters of the past. The experience of both countries suggests that sober historical consciousness and a healthy civic patriotism must be cultivated together. Canada and Germany have much to learn from each other about how to preserve the achievements of their moral reckonings while renewing the sense of common purpose and Heimat (a word for “homeland”) upon which their democratic futures depend.
The political parallels between Germany and Canada extend to their governing institutions. Like Canada, Germany is a federation, comprising 16 states, or Länder, with considerable powers of their own. Its lower house, the Bundestag, is elected through a mixed-member proportional representation system that combines local constituency elections with party lists, preserving a degree of local representation while producing a broadly proportional legislature. The states themselves participate directly in federal lawmaking through the Bundesrat, or Federal Council, where each state government holds between three and six votes, depending on its population. This model has an intriguing precedent in Canadian constitutional debates: the 1979 Pépin–Robarts Task Force on Canadian Unity proposed replacing the Senate with a similarly constituted Council of the Federation, composed of delegates from provincial governments.
Executive power is also organized differently. The Chancellor, ordinarily the leader of the largest party in a governing coalition, is elected by the Bundestag and formally appointed by the largely ceremonial Federal President. The Chancellor exercises Richtlinienkompetenz, the constitutional prerogative to establish the government's overarching policy guidelines, while individual cabinet ministers retain considerable autonomy over their respective portfolios. Compared with the ever-growing concentration of executive authority in the Canadian prime minister's office, German governance places greater emphasis on negotiation, coalition-building, and the distribution of responsibility among ministers and states.
Such institutional differences are worth understanding as Canada contemplates closer integration with the European Union. The European project is itself an exercise in reconciling national sovereignty with the ambition of ever-closer union, and Germany's experience with federalism and political compromise has helped shape its approach to that undertaking. If Canada is serious about deepening its relationship with Europe, it must develop a more sophisticated understanding of the political institutions and governing traditions of its most influential member states.
Critical engagement with European political and cultural issues should not be the exclusive prerogative of any one side of the Canadian political divide. The premise that Canada is the “most European” country outside Europe is deeply flawed, and there are legitimate reasons to question the wisdom and feasibility of any kind of Canadian membership in the EU. Yet Canadians increasingly recognize that the world has changed, and many are now seriously contemplating a future that looks beyond the shores of North America. Our debate over this future must move beyond the exaggerated prospect of Canada joining the EU and begin examining the more substantive questions of what closer relations would actually entail, and what the two sides might learn from one another.
Indeed, the exchange of political ideas between Canada and Germany has never been entirely one-sided. During her visit to Ottawa in August 2012, amid the turmoil of the eurozone debt crisis, Chancellor Angela Merkel held up Canada’s fiscal discipline and economic management as an example for Europe, praising its ability to weather the global financial crisis without sacrificing financial stability. That now largely forgotten endorsement offers a reminder that Canada has sometimes been a source of inspiration for European policymakers. There are many more avenues for comparative exploration, particularly in federalism and constitutional governance. Beyond Germany itself, the European Union presents an even more intriguing experiment in reconciling the sovereignty of its constituent members with the demands of collective political and economic action. These are questions that could sustain generations of scholarly inquiry and practical institutional exchange.
For all the frustrations of Canadian and European federalism, it is worth remembering what these arrangements have achieved. Canadians are well acquainted with constitutional deadlock, provincial grievances, and seemingly endless arguments over jurisdiction, just as Europeans know the frustrations of coalition negotiations, competing national interests, and the institutional compromises required to hold their Union together. Yet these often cumbersome systems have provided durable frameworks for the coexistence of peoples with different languages, histories, political traditions, and economic interests. It may prove much more productive for Canada and Europe to integrate what institutional wisdom we can glean from each other than to force these two continental systems into an uneasy marriage.
At the risk of sounding self-aggrandizing, I believe more young Canadians should pursue paths like mine, integrating European languages, history, politics, and institutions into their academic and professional aspirations. There is an even more urgent need for such expertise when we turn from political and cultural affinities to the practical business of international cooperation.
III. The Europawende: A Closer Look
Nowhere are the opportunities, or the obstacles, more consequential than in the economic, industrial, and defence relationships between Ottawa and Berlin. Even as cultural and personal ties remain modest, high-level cooperation between governments and sectors points to the spaces where the German-Canadian relationship can reach its fullest potential and where it can generate the needed people-to-people ties.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 forced Germany to confront the vulnerabilities of a security and economic model long dependent on inexpensive Russian energy and a relatively restrained military posture. In a speech which Canadians may now find greatly reminiscent, Chancellor Olaf Scholz proclaimed a Zeitenwende—a historic inflection point—that would require Germany to fundamentally reconsider its place in the world. Although the term became most closely associated with the country's ambitious programme of military rearmament, the implications of this transformation extended well beyond defence. Energy security, industrial competitiveness, and the reliability of Germany’s international partners all assumed renewed urgency. For Canada, this upheaval presented an unprecedented opportunity to deepen its relationship with Europe's largest economy but also exposed the differences in political priorities that would complicate such cooperation.
Energy offers a particularly revealing example of these differences that both countries must reckon with. Germany’s deep-seated scepticism toward nuclear power, reinforced by decades of environmental activism, culminated in the closure of its last nuclear reactors in 2023. Its ambitious transition toward renewable energy has nevertheless left the country dependent on fossil fuels, including imported natural gas, making energy security a particularly urgent concern following the collapse of its relationship with Russia. This produced an awkward moment in August 2022, when Scholz visited Canada seeking alternative sources of natural gas, only for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to publicly question the commercial viability of Canadian LNG exports from the Atlantic Coast. Standing alongside Scholz at a joint press conference, Trudeau declared that there had “never been a strong business case” for such export terminals, citing the infrastructure and logistical obstacles involved. The two leaders instead announced a partnership to develop Canadian hydrogen exports, an undertaking more consistent with Ottawa’s energy-transition priorities but less immediately responsive to Germany's pressing need for natural gas. The episode illustrated the distance that could exist between two ostensibly like-minded governments when their respective economic and strategic priorities diverged.
It was not until 2026 that Canadian LNG producers secured major long-term supply agreements with German energy companies, beginning with a May agreement with SEFE and culminating in a July contract between British Columbia’s Ksi Lisims LNG project and Germany’s Uniper for two million tonnes annually over as many as twenty years. Even then, deliveries were not expected to begin until 2032. For all the enthusiasm surrounding closer Canadian-European relations, Germany's experience serves as a reminder that goodwill and shared values cannot substitute for an appreciation of the practical interests, institutional constraints, and economic realities that shape the decisions of our prospective partners. If Canada is to become a reliable partner in Europe’s pursuit of greater strategic autonomy, it must learn to anticipate European needs and translate opportunities for cooperation into tangible results, rather than responding only after geopolitical crises have made their urgency impossible to ignore.
The broader economic relationship between Canada and Germany is already more extensive than most Canadians appreciate. Germany is Canada's largest trading partner in the European Union, with bilateral merchandise trade exceeding $30 billion annually, supported by the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), provisionally implemented in 2017. The relationship is nevertheless characterized by a considerable imbalance in the composition and value of trade. Canadian exports to Germany consist substantially of energy products, raw materials, aerospace components, and other manufactured goods, while German exports to Canada are dominated by higher-value industrial machinery, automobiles, and pharmaceuticals. Germany is also among Canada's largest sources of foreign direct investment, with approximately $40.5 billion invested in Canada in 2025.
According to the Canadian German Chamber of Industry and Commerce, some 628 German companies operate in Canada, employing more than seventy-one thousand people. These figures speak to a relationship whose depth is easily overlooked amid the overwhelming predominance of the United States in Canadian economic life. Germany’s aforementioned Mittelstand firms, with their tradition of specialized manufacturing, technical expertise, and long-term investment, offer particularly fertile ground for industrial cooperation. For Canada, the opportunity lies in cultivating deeper relationships with these firms that often fly below the radar (naturally, due to their modest size and scale as SMEs), acquiring technical expertise, and developing a more sophisticated industrial presence in European markets. In turn, Mittelstand firms struggling to compete with Chinese manufacturing may be reinvigorated by these new partnerships.
The most promising avenue for closer cooperation may be the integration of the two countries’ industrial supply chains. Germany’s enormous manufacturing sector, particularly its automotive and chemical industries, depends on reliable access to raw materials that it cannot produce domestically in sufficient quantities. Its pursuit of the Energiewende, or energy transition, has created an even greater demand for critical minerals such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, and rare earth elements, many of which are essential for batteries, electric motors, renewable energy technologies, and advanced defence equipment.
As Export Development Canada observed in January 2026, Germany’s dependence on imported critical minerals, particularly those processed in China, represents an increasingly serious strategic vulnerability. Canada possesses substantial reserves of many of these resources, along with the technological and industrial capacity to contribute to their processing. During Prime Minister Carney’s visit to Berlin in August 2025, the two governments signed a Joint Declaration of Intent on Critical Minerals Cooperation, committing to closer collaboration in extraction, refining, recycling, research, and project financing. The visit also produced commercial arrangements, including an agreement between Quebec’s Troilus Gold and Hamburg-based Aurubis for future copper concentrate supplies, and another between Torngat Metals and the German magnet manufacturer Vacuumschmelze concerning rare earth oxides.
These developments suggest the possibility of a complementary industrial relationship in which Canadian resources and German manufacturing expertise are brought together to produce more sophisticated goods. Yet the challenge for Canada is to avoid remaining principally an exporter of unprocessed commodities. The real prize would be to use German investment, technical expertise, and access to European markets to establish more processing, manufacturing, and technological capacity at home.
Industrial cooperation has also expanded beyond conventional resource extraction. In February 2026, Industry Minister Mélanie Joly and her German counterpart Katherina Reiche signed an agreement to deepen cooperation in automotive manufacturing, battery production, and electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles. Further agreements have followed in semiconductors, digital technologies, and artificial intelligence. In February, the two governments launched a Sovereign Technology Alliance, intended to support joint research, secure computing infrastructure, and the development of technological capabilities less dependent on foreign suppliers. These undertakings build upon an established tradition of scientific cooperation.
The defence relationship has assumed even greater importance. In July 2026, Ottawa selected the German shipbuilder Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) as its preferred supplier for the Canadian Patrol Submarine Project, potentially involving the acquisition of up to twelve Type 212CD submarines. The programme, described as the largest defence procurement in Canadian history, would provide Canada with a modern submarine fleet based on a design also being developed for the German and Norwegian navies. Although the final contract remains subject to negotiation, the decision carries implications extending far beyond the purchase of military hardware. Shared platforms create opportunities for cooperation in maintenance, training, logistics, procurement, and the development of common technical standards, while closer integration with German and Norwegian defence industries could provide Canadian firms with access to specialized technologies and European supply chains.
Canada has also taken the initiative in developing an entirely new institution for transatlantic defence financing. The proposed Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB), which would be headquartered in Canada, aims to mobilize approximately €100 billion to provide affordable financing for defence procurement, industrial expansion, and smaller manufacturers seeking to enter military supply chains. Prime Minister Carney has championed the initiative as part of a broader effort to strengthen collective security through the mobilization of private capital, securing the support of eight other countries by July 2026. Yet Germany, alongside several other major economies, has so far declined to commit, raising concerns about the proposed bank’s financial viability and its potential duplication of existing European programmes like ReArm Europe/Readiness 2030, under which Canada also participates in the SAFE defence financing instrument. German financial institutions, including Deutsche Bank, have nevertheless participated in efforts to support its establishment. The episode illustrates both the possibilities and the complications of Canada’s emerging European ambitions. Ottawa is no longer content merely to participate in existing transatlantic institutions but is seeking to create new ones. Whether these initiatives ultimately succeed will depend in no small part on Canada’s ability to persuade major European partners, particularly Germany, that they offer genuine advantages over the arrangements already available to them.
Taken together, these developments suggest that Canada is undergoing what might appropriately be called a Europawende: a historic reorientation toward Europe, growing but still incomplete, undoubtedly inspired by the rupture in the transatlantic order, and sustained by the recognition that Canada must cultivate deeper economic, political, and strategic relationships beyond North America. The term deliberately echoes Germany’s own Zeitenwende, for the two countries are responding, in different ways and on different timelines, to the same ongoing upheaval in the international order. Yet if Canada’s Europawende is to become something more than a passing geopolitical enthusiasm, it must necessarily run through Germany, Europe's largest economy and its foremost industrial power.
There may be an apparent contradiction between the depth of accelerating integration detailed here and the unfamiliarity with Germany that characterizes much of Canadian public life. How can a country so poorly understood by Canadians also be one of our most consequential European partners? The answer lies in the distinction between the relationship as it exists at the highest levels of government and industry, and its comparatively limited penetration into the everyday lives of Canadians. Much of the recent momentum has been driven by diplomatic initiatives, government-to-government agreements, and partnerships among established industrial and research institutions. These are considerable achievements, but they have yet to generate the breadth of personal, professional, and commercial relationships that would make Germany a more familiar presence in Canadian society. The task is therefore to extend the relationship beyond its existing institutional foundations, allowing the political and economic rapprochement between Ottawa and Berlin to take root throughout both societies. For if we want Canada’s Europawende to succeed, there must be a corresponding Kanadawende in Europe.
IV. The Free World—or What’s Left of It
The European Union’s anthem is drawn from the final movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, his musical setting of An die Freude or “Ode to Joy,” a poem composed in 1785 by Friedrich Schiller, one of Germany's great national poets. An enduring, if perhaps apocryphal, story holds that Schiller originally conceived the poem as An die Freiheit or “Ode to Freedom.” Whether or not this was ever his intention, the distinction between joy and freedom seems almost immaterial to the universal brotherhood that the poem celebrates. Its verses imagine a humanity brought together across the divisions of custom, circumstance, and nationality, united by a common aspiration toward something greater than itself.
When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, and the foundations of modern reunified Germany began to take shape, the legendary American conductor Leonard Bernstein assembled musicians from East and West Germany, alongside performers from the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, for a historic performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. At the Christmas Day concert in East Berlin, Bernstein made one extraordinary alteration to Schiller’s text: wherever the chorus would ordinarily sing Freude, it sang Freiheit. Joy had become freedom, in celebration of a city and a people emerging from four decades of division. Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng geteilt. (“Freedom’s magic binds together again what custom has so strictly divided.”) Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt. (“All men become brothers wherever thy gentle wings abide.”)
The world which greeted that performance, with its seemingly limitless promise of a new age of peace, democracy, and international cooperation, has since become a distant memory. The institutions and alliances that appeared so secure in the decades following the Cold War are once again subject to fundamental uncertainty. Be it a Zeitenwende or a rupture in the world order, Germany and Canada are, in their different ways, responding to the disintegration of that earlier confidence. Neither country can take for granted the permanence of the order that once sustained its prosperity and security. Yet the lesson of 1989 should not be forgotten amid the anxieties of our own time. The free world was never merely a collection of states united by their opposition to a common adversary. At its best, it represented a conviction that peoples divided by language, history, and political experience could nevertheless recognize something of themselves in one another, and build institutions capable of preserving their freedom together.
Canada is free, and, as Wilfrid Laurier reminds us, freedom is its nationality. If we are earnest about becoming the most European country outside the European continent, the task before us is much larger than policy harmonization, diplomatic declarations, and rhetorical alignment. Nor can our estrangement from the United States, however painful, provide a sufficient foundation for a new European identity.
Schiller’s ode also contains a solemn admonition: Und wer’s nie gekonnt, der stehle, weinend, sich aus diesem Bund. (“And whoever has never known such fellowship, may he steal away, weeping, from this union.”) It is a reminder, however sternly expressed, that the fraternity of free peoples cannot be taken for granted. The bonds that hold them together must be created, renewed, and defended by successive generations. I hope that this is the future toward which Canada’s Europawende will lead us: one in which the peoples on either side of the Atlantic know one another well enough to recognize their differences, trust one another enough to overcome them, and value their common freedom enough to preserve the fellowship that binds them together.
Perhaps, many years from now, another Canadian student will find himself sitting on the lawn outside a university dining hall somewhere in Europe, conversing with young Germans and their neighbours about the countries from which they come. The question of whether Canada is European or not may arise again, perhaps in jest, perhaps in earnest. But I would like to imagine that the conversation will unfold differently. The Europeans will know something of Canada’s history, its North American character, its constitutional peculiarities, and the aspirations and anxieties of its people. The Canadian, in turn, will recognize his interlocutors as more than the representatives of a distant continent with supposedly familiar values. He will know something of their languages, their national stories, their political disagreements, and the circumstances that shaped their understanding of the world. They may discover that they disagree about matters that neither had previously considered. Yet these differences will furnish the beginnings of a richer melody, rather than an obstacle to understanding.
Thank you to Michael Cuenco for help with trade policy research—and with the conceptual development of the essay's theme of the Europawende.
Rudy Yuan is a candidate of the Master of Global Affairs program at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.
Photo by Christian David, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.