By Leni Spooner, creator of Between the Lines.
Why Canada’s domestic debate still sounds like the Cold War — and why it’s starting to undermine our global reputation
Kicker:
Abroad, Canada is expanding its reach through cooperation and credibility. At home, zero-sum rhetoric risks making us look unreliable to the very partners who trust us most.
The Fairness Illusion
Canadians love fairness. It’s stitched into everything from our taxes to our timetables.
But our sense of fairness often starts small — like dessert. We picture a single pie, carefully sliced. If one person gets more, someone else must get less.
That same instinct colours how we argue about policy. Every trade deal, climate commitment, or federal initiative becomes a test of who’s winning or losing. We forget that fairness isn’t always a perfect split — sometimes it’s about having enough for everyone.
It’s a Cold War mindset: scarcity by instinct, competition by habit.
Except geopolitics today isn’t poker night. It’s potluck. And Canada — despite its genuine progress abroad — keeps getting distracted by food fights at home.
“You’d think geopolitics was still poker night, not potluck.”
What We Mean by Zero-Sum
In game theory, a zero-sum game is one where the total stays the same: every gain for one player is a loss for another.
Poker is zero-sum — every dollar you win comes straight from someone else’s pocket.
But most of life isn’t poker. It’s gardening. Or cooking.
You can share seeds and still have a harvest. You can teach someone a recipe and still keep your own. That’s the non-zero world — cooperation that creates new value instead of shifting old value around.
Canada’s problem isn’t that we don’t understand cooperation; it’s that our politics keep describing everything like poker when the real opportunity is in the kitchen.
Reflexes of Scarcity
Internationally, the Carney government has been doing almost everything right.
Expanding trade beyond the U.S., deepening partnerships with the EU and Indo-Pacific, and restoring Canada’s reputation as a reliable, rules-based ally — it’s textbook soft power.
But inside our own borders, the tone shifts. Domestic debate turns cooperative moves into competitive ones.
Take the One Canadian Economy Act, designed to break down internal trade barriers and speed up infrastructure. Abroad, that’s exactly the kind of modernization investors applaud. Yet at home, it triggered a reflexive backlash.
Indigenous leaders warned of “reckless … wide-sweeping Ministerial powers … in the absence of adequate protections.” MPs quipped the bill would “make Harper blush.” The conversation became all about who gains power and who loses it — not whether efficiency could lift all regions and stakeholders together.
Then came Carney’s tariff rollback under CUSMA. Removing retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods was meant to stabilize and maximize cost efficiency of cross-border trade for our businesses and reduce inflation at home — a smart, confidence-building gesture in a volatile world. But here again, the domestic commentary was brutal.
“Soft on America.”
“Selling out the rink.”
“Sweet Jesus, we were all deceived.”
Different issue, same pattern. Moves designed to build trust abroad are recast at home as weakness — as if friendship comes only at the expense of pride.
The Non-Zero Reality
The truth is almost embarrassingly simple: modern prosperity depends on cooperation.
When Canada expands critical-mineral partnerships with Europe or opens Atlantic ports to green hydrogen, everyone wins — exporters, workers, and the planet. When Indigenous-led infrastructure funds align climate goals with sovereignty, those aren’t trade-offs; they’re multipliers.
Tariffs that vanish keep goods moving for both countries. Shared data sparks innovation across borders. Efficient grids and transport corridors raise productivity province by province.
That’s the logic of interdependence — non-zero growth. Not a poker table, but a shared oven warming common futures.
“Canada’s partners see cooperation. Canadians too often see competition.”
The Domestic Disconnect
The problem isn’t what Canada is doing abroad — it’s how we talk about it at home.
Our internal debate keeps toggling between two tired narratives:
- Governments promising to grow the pie.
- Oppositions warning we’ll lose our slice.
To international observers, that noise looks like instability. Trading partners read our headlines and wonder: Can Canada deliver on what it promises?
If we can’t agree that shared growth is strength, it risks undermining the very credibility we’ve built overseas.
The Cost of the Chatter
The danger isn’t just that domestic squabbling sounds unseemly. It’s that it quietly erodes trust — both abroad and at home.
When international partners see headlines about endless Canadian gridlock, they start to wonder whether we can follow through. Promising new trade corridors stall under regional squabbles. Infrastructure investors hesitate, unsure which level of government actually speaks for Canada.
And when the opposition leader publicly posts an open letter criticizing the government’s negotiation stance mid-talks with Washington, it’s more than political theatre — it’s strategy sabotage. American negotiators read it too. They see division. They sense weakness. They know Carney and his team will face pressure to cave “for the sake of getting a deal,” and they push harder.
“You can’t keep inviting guests for dinner if the family keeps fighting in front of them.”
The same holds true overseas. Canada has committed to ambitious, nation-building infrastructure — modern ports, energy corridors, new northern supply routes — projects that signal long-term reliability. But when our government is being politically crucified before a single shovel hits dirt, how confident can the EU or Japan be that those commitments will survive their next news cycle?
That’s the real zero-sum game: every round of political point-scoring costs us credibility abroad, confidence at home, and precious time in a world that’s moving faster than we are.
Beyond the Old Game Board
The world now operates like a co-op kitchen. Every major economy shares ingredients: energy grids, technology standards, migration patterns, trust networks. Those who thrive aren’t the fiercest competitors; they’re the most reliable collaborators.
Canada could be — and largely already is — the partner everyone wants at the table: pragmatic, inventive, values-driven. But our politics keep dragging us back to Cold War scorekeeping, where every handshake hides betrayal and every success implies someone else’s loss.
Zero-sum thinkers will keep asking who’s up and who’s down.
The rest of the world has moved on to asking: What can we build together?
For a country built on pluralism — and powered by shared land, shared risk, and shared purpose — that question should come naturally.
Back to the Kitchen Table
This is where ordinary Canadians come in.
Every time you hear a headline, a podcast, or a Question Period clip framing the world as us versus them, pause. Ask yourself:
- Is this really a competition — or is it cooperation being misread as weakness?
- What’s the multiplier potential here? Who else could benefit if we get this right?
- Who wins if we keep arguing in circles while others move ahead?
When we train ourselves to listen for the zero-sum framing in our media and politics, we start to see how often it’s used to inflame, not inform. We can push back — by rewarding nuance, sharing sources that highlight collaboration, and refusing to take cynicism as analysis.
“Challenge the scoreboard. Ask what could grow if we stopped keeping score.”
Because democracy isn’t just about casting a ballot — it’s about shaping the conversation in between elections. And that conversation starts with how we interpret what we hear.
Canada’s credibility abroad, and our shared prosperity at home, depend on millions of small acts of discernment. On citizens who notice the difference between a fight and a fix, a sound bite and a solution.
If we can start doing that — around our kitchen tables, in our communities, and online — we’ll make sure Canada’s cooperative instincts aren’t drowned out by competitive noise.
If we show up ready to bake, not to bargain, there really will be enough pie for everyone.
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About the Author
Leni Spooner is a Canadian writer, researcher, and civic storyteller. She is the founder of Between the Lines, a publication focused on the quiet forces shaping politics, infrastructure, and public life. Her work blends historical context with present-day analysis, helping readers see the deeper patterns that shape national decisions.