FOR NEARLY A YEAR, Canadians have been discussing the danger posed by the United States. The anxiety shows up everywhere—online forums, polling questions, and in the unusually blunt asides from officials. This is good. We need to get in the habit of having hard conversations about who threatens us, the extent of that threat, and what we can and must do if we are to survive as an independent country.

For CANADA, the diagnosis of the US administration is not academic. It is the difference between managing a relationship with a flawed but crucial ally and planning a campaign of resistance against a powerful neighbour no longer reliably constrained by its domestic institutions.

Unfortunately, we see signs of deference everywhere.

Congress has effectively abandoned its role in holding the president to account. It has failed to uphold its power of the purse on things like international development assistance, bowing to the administration’s decision to simply not spend the money. The loss of that funding has already led to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition. It has failed to uphold congressional power to declare war, ignoring military actions in the Caribbean that culminated in the unlawful capture of Venezuela’s authoritarian president. It declined to act when the administration sidestepped the Senate’s confirmation power by allowing Elon Musk to wield cabinet-level authority without ever being confirmed. Congress has also largely demurred in defence of its power to regulate import tariffs. It is, in effect, a presidential lapdog.