University of Calgary launches initiative to study new relationship with the U.S.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith speaks during a press conference in Edmonton, Tuesday, May 6, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson

The University of Calgary is launching an initiative to study how Canada’s relationship with the United States is changing with U.S. President Donald Trump in the White House.

Researchers at the New North America Initiative, based in the university’s School of Public Policy, have been tasked with coming up with a vision of what the continental relationship could become at a time of increasing trade uncertainty and geopolitical turmoil.

“I think it’s clear to everyone that we aren’t going back to where we were a few years ago, or even during the first Trump administration,” said Carlo Dade, the School of Public Policy’s international policy director.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith will be making an announcement to supply funding for the initiative in Calgary with Rajan Sawhney at 11 a.m.

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“With the crisis in Canada-U.S. relations, it’s clear our traditional policies and the ways we engage the Americans and their federal and state governments have not been enough,” Martha Hall Findlay, director of the School of Public Policy, said in a media statement.

“We need new thinking and new ways of engaging, and we need the work behind this to come from new places and new voices on both sides of the border.”

Trump’s first administration turned into a stress test for the federal government when he hit Canada with steel and aluminum tariffs and tore up the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Negotiations on the deal that replaced NAFTA — the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement on trade, or CUSMA — were tense and former prime minister Justin Trudeau had a notoriously rocky relationship with Trump. The continental trade pact was still hailed a success.

Canadians who expected to see the friendly bilateral relationship with the U.S. restored with the passage of CUSMA were taken aback by the unprecedented tariffs and annexation threats that accompanied Trump’s return to the White House. 

Many were appalled when Canada became an early target of the president’s insults — but many never expected Trump to follow through on his tariff threats.

Trump hit Canada with economywide duties in March, then partially walked them back a few days later for imports compliant with CUSMA. Canada is also being hit with levies on steel, aluminum and automobiles.

“We have consistently misjudged what a Trump administration will do,” Dade said.

Canada can no longer continue “driving forward by looking in the rear-view mirror instead of looking clearly at what lies ahead and what’s coming,” Dade said. Canadians must abandon their nostalgic attachment to the old relationship, Dade said, and imagine what it could become.

The university’s initiative will have interrelated parts. It will conduct research on immediate challenges facing Albertans due to the deterioration of relations with the U.S. It also will set up collaboration between Albertans and researchers at American universities to help them better understand each other.

Dade said the fact that the work will be done outside both Ottawa and Washington will help it break away from traditional thinking and come up with ideas to solve problems facing both countries.

“Through this initiative, the University of Calgary and the School of Public Policy are taking the lead in bringing together the expertise of our researchers and partners to provide evidence-based public policy advice to government at a critical moment in Canada-U.S. relations,” said Ed McCauley, University of Calgary president and vice-chancellor, in a statement.

The new Alberta initiative comes after Trump signed an executive order to essentially shut down an influential think tank Canadians have used for many years to get their messages out in Washington, D.C.

The March order shuttered nearly all operations at the Wilson Center and terminated its Canada Institute.

Christopher Sands, who was the Canada Institute director, said it’s essential that Canadians continue to have meaningful conversations with Americans as the relationship between the two countries changes.

“We’ve come to the end of what we will look back on as being a very special period in the relationship,” said Sands, director of Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Canadian Studies.

Canadians were “lulled into a sense of false complacency,” Sands said, but Trump’s tariffs have shown the need for urgent action. Canada can no longer assume that everything will go back to normal, he said.

Changing American views about Canada and trade show that think tanks also need to adapt, Sands said. The New North America Initiative could meet the moment, he added.

Dade said the initiative will listening to voices in what he calls the “New Right” and “New Left” to understand what could come after the current Trump administration.

“We need to know who these people are before they suddenly start imposing tariffs,” he said.

— By Kelly Geraldine Malone in Washington, D.C.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 16, 2025.