EDITORIAL: No, Canada is not a ‘European’ country

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Prime Minister Mark Carney has prepared Canadians for his bid to have Canada become an associate member of the European Union by claiming, "Canada is the most European of non-European countries."

The problem with this claim is that it isn't true.

In reality, we could be better described as the most American of non-American countries, however often we declare ourselves to be fundamentally different from the U.S.

In fact, it is only because of U.S. President Donald Trump's campaign to change our economic relationship with the U.S., that we're now looking for closer ties with the EU.

Canadian governments of all stripes talked for years about diversifying our economy away from U.S. dominance, but were never serious about it until Trump became U.S. president.

Economically, for example, the value of Canadian goods exported to the U.S. last year was $564.6 billion, or 72% of our total merchandise exports of $779 billion.

By comparison, the value of Canadian goods exported to the 27-member-nation EU was $43 billion, or 5.5% of our total merchandise exports.

In 2024, Canadian direct investment in the U.S. hit $1.3 trillion, or 52.1% of total Canadian holdings abroad, compared to $485.5 billion for all of Europe, or 19.6%, and that was led by the U.K., which is not a member of the EU.

Culturally, we are far more aligned with the U.S. than the EU.

We share the same border and dominant language, which is not the case with the multilingual, multi-state EU.

While we certainly have our own Canadian cultural industries, for the most part we watch the same television shows and go to the same movies as the Americans, listen to the same music and watch the same major professional sporting organizations, including the NHL, MLB, NBA, NFL and MLS.

It's true our publicly-funded health-care system has more in common with many EU countries than the U.S.

But our political culture is far different from the EU.

In fact, we are much closer to the U.S. in that both of our nations reject the EU concept of pooled sovereignty, in which the individual member countries of the EU must abide by EU decisions on monetary, tariff and trade policies.

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