Source: The Conversation – Canada
When United States President Donald Trump first began calling former prime minister Justin Trudeau the “governor” of the “great state of Canada” in December 2024, I remember telling friends we should be concerned.
One friend told me I was overreacting. It was just Trump being Trump. By then, Trump’s taste for insults and outlandish claims was well established.
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Psychoanalysis explains why Donald Trump is taunting Canada and ‘Governor Justin Trudeau’
Calling a Canadian prime minister a governor could easily be heard as just another taunt. Early on, even some Canadian officials dismissed his talk of Canada becoming the 51st state as a joke.
Almost two years later, that explanation is harder to sustain. Trump has repeatedly questioned Canadian sovereignty, including insisting he’s serious about making Canada the 51st state.
Escalated trade war
His government has also escalated its trade war with Canada, most recently imposing 50 per cent tariffs on roughly US$20 billion in Canadian goods and prompting Canadian retaliation.
Now Trump has signed an executive order directing the American federal government to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America.”
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Trump’s ‘renaming’ of Lake Ontario is emblematic of centuries of colonial erasure
The name is almost comically uncreative. But the logic behind it has a long colonial history. Naming places can be a way of claiming territory and shaping who is understood to belong there.
Cannot rename the lake for Canada
Trump cannot rename the lake for Canada. But “Lake America” gives official form to an idea he has repeated for nearly two years. Canadian borders and sovereignty are somehow open to negotiation.
Humour can help relieve anxiety and make powerful people appear less intimidating.
In response to Trump’s Lake Ontario bluster, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew compared the president to an aging rock band playing old hits at a casino and framed “Lake America” as a recycled version of the Gulf of America stunt. The comparison is effective. It also shows how easily another challenge to Canadian sovereignty can become familiar Trump theatre.
Exercises of political power
Trump has previously been described as petulant and as a bully.
Those descriptions might accurately describe his behaviour, but they risk reducing exercises of political power to questions of temperament. Repeated threats can start to look like another performance from an unusually volatile man.
Trump is sometimes treated like a court jester, a figure licensed to say outrageous things because the role allows him to violate ordinary rules of speech.
But Trump is not standing beside the throne, even though he’s styled himself as the king and embraced an expansive view of presidential power. In 2025, the White House circulated an image of him wearing a crown after he declared “LONG LIVE THE KING!”
This uncertainty around when Trump should be taken literally has become part of his political style. Audiences are repeatedly left to decide whether a statement is a joke, a negotiating tactic or a genuine policy position.
Meaningful Indigenous consultation
In his response to “Lake America,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pointed to the Indigenous origins of “Ontario,” saying it originates from a Wendat word.
He argued that recognizing reality meant continuing to use the lake’s historic name.
His invocation of the lake’s Indigenous name, incidentally, is ironic given the contrast between this rhetorical deference and his government’s push to accelerate major resource development amid concerns about meaningful Indigenous consultation.
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As Canada is threatened, it’s urgent to revisit Indigenous sovereignty and nationhood
Canary in the coal mine
Canada has spent decades regarding the U.S. as its closest ally, and isn’t used to being the target of American coercion. The shock comes partly from being forced to confront a kind of U.S. power that many Canadians assumed would be directed elsewhere.
In early 2025, cabinet minister Mélanie Joly described Canada as a “canary in the coal mine” for allies confronting a more coercive America. Trump’s threats against Canada, in fact, were followed by similar threats involving Greenland and the Panama Canal.
Political leaders have often responded cautiously, a restraint that may be necessary but risks dismissing Trump’s threats when they should be taken seriously.
Earlier this summer, Trump threatened tariffs over Canadian wildfire smoke drifting into the U.S. In a letter to Carney, Republican lawmakers suggested that Canada’s sovereignty carried obligations it had failed to meet in terms of wildfires.
Trump’s style of governance regularly produces this kind of absurdity. Smoke does not recognize national borders. But more troubling is how quickly the president’s imperial framing spreads. Questioning whether Canada deserves sovereignty starts to sound like a routine political provocation.
Dismissing threats?
A 2025 Ipsos public opinion poll found that 79 per cent of Canadians would never vote to join the United States. At the same time, the share who believed Trump’s comments threatened Canadian independence fell from 48 per cent to 31 per cent between January and September 2025. The decline may reflect confidence that annexation is unlikely. It may also show how repeated threats can become easier to dismiss.
“Gulf of America,” instead of Gulf of Mexico, already appears on U.S. maps, and presumably “Lake America” is set to follow. It’s easy to imagine those names eventually appearing in U.S. classrooms as accepted facts. This sits uneasily beside an administration already trying to reshape how history is taught.
Carney has warned against assuming the old order will return. Whether the U.S. has fundamentally changed or Canadians are only seeing it more clearly is a larger question.
It’s more certain that when a political leader repeatedly tells us what he wants, albeit through exaggeration or absurdity, there is a point at which treating it as a joke becomes its own form of denial.
Sometimes the joke is the warning.
Cornel Grey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/08/28/trumps-lake-ontario-bluster-why-treating-his-sovereignty-threats-as-a-joke-is-dangerous/