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Brexit: A Critical Juncture for Canada’s Transatlantic Relations?1 

 

Achim Hurrelmann, Carleton University2 

 

 

 

Abstract 

This article assesses how Brexit—the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European 

Union (EU)—has impacted Canada’s relations with its European partners. Based on a historical 

institutionalist framework, the article reviews three key dimensions of Brexit: economic 

disintegration, political differentiation, and populist mobilization. In each dimension, it assesses 

whether Brexit constituted a critical juncture for Canada’s transatlantic relations—meaning that it 

increased institutional contingency—and then reviews which forms of change occurred since the 

2016 referendum. The analysis shows that Brexit did indeed give rise to public debates about new 

directions in Canada-UK and Canada-EU relations. However, the changes that unfolded in the 

years after Brexit remained incremental and relatively subtle. In the economic dimension, a limited 

set of new Canada-UK institutions were added without undermining Canada-EU institutions. In 

the political dimension, institutional configurations remained stable. In the populist dimension, an 

increased politicization of transatlantic relations in the discourse of Canadian political parties did 

not have broader societal resonance. 

 

 

 

 

  

 
1 Research for this article was supported by an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research 

Council of Canada (File 435-2019-0770). The author is indebted to his co-investigators Petra Dolata, Patrick 

Leblond, and Frédéric Mérand. All three provided helpful comments; Frédéric Mérand also conducted many of the 

expert interviews on which parts of the analysis are based. The author also wishes to thank Russell Foster and three 

anonymous reviewers for the Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies for their feedback and 

suggestions. 
2 Achim Hurrelmann is a Professor of Political Science and the Co-Director of the Centre for European Studies at 

Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. 



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The withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU)—triggered by a 

referendum in 2016 and implemented in 2020—has not only transformed politics in the UK and 

the EU but also impacted both polities’ international partners (Adler-Nissen et al. 2017; Chaban 

et al. 2021). For these partners, Brexit implied that relations with the UK and with the EU, which 

used to be firmly integrated in many policy fields, needed to be disentangled. This challenge was 

particularly intricate and sensitive for states that are former parts of the British Empire, since many 

of these continued to view the UK both as their principal European ally and as their main entry 

point—economically, politically, and culturally—to European institutions and societies.  

Canada is a case in point. The significance of the UK as a frame of reference for Canadian foreign 

policy is hard to overstate. Given the postcolonial connections to the UK, Canadian governments, 

businesses, and large parts of the public have long considered the UK Canada’s most important 

European partner (Chaban 2019; Hurrelmann 2020; Rayroux 2019). Yet Canada-UK relations 

were, for more than forty years, embedded in European integration. The importance of the EU for 

Canada’s transatlantic relations was affirmed by the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and 

Trade Agreement (CETA) and Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA), both of which entered into 

force on a provisional basis in 2017, before Brexit had taken effect. These agreements exacerbated 

the challenge of disentangling Canada-UK and Canada-EU relations in a post-Brexit environment. 

Almost eight years after the referendum, this article attempts a first assessment of how Canada’s 

relations with its European partners—both the UK and the EU—have been reconfigured after the 

UK’s departure from the EU. Which challenges did Brexit pose for the Canada-UK and Canada-

EU relationship? How have policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic navigated these 

challenges? How much change in Canada’s transatlantic relations has occurred as a result?  

The analysis presented here is based on a historical institutionalist conceptual framework. 

Historical institutionalism describes institutional developments as the outcome of longer-term path 

dependencies, set in motion by decisions taken at critical junctures at which fundamental 

institutional change becomes possible (Thelen 1999). This article examines whether Brexit has 

constituted such a critical juncture for Canada’s transatlantic relations and whether it has set 

Canada’s relations with its European partners on new institutional paths. 

The analysis in this article distinguishes three dimensions of Brexit, each of which has distinct 

implications for Canada: economic disintegration, political differentiation, and populist 

mobilization. After setting the analytical framework by discussing the concept of critical junctures 

and their relationship to institutional change, the article will explain these three dimensions and 

examine developments in Canada’s transatlantic relations in each respect. It draws on a diverse set 

of empirical sources, including economic statistics, policy documents, public statements by 

politicians, and expert interviews with Canadian and European diplomats. The final section 

compares developments in the three dimensions and discusses factors that account for the 

identified institutional trajectories. 

 

Conceptual Considerations: Critical Junctures and Institutional Change 

In a historical institutionalist framework, critical junctures are defined as relatively short periods 

of heightened institutional contingency that interrupt and configure longer periods of path-

dependent institutional development. The concept of critical junctures was first introduced to 

political science by Lipset and Rokkan (1967, 37-38) in their seminal analysis of Western 



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European party systems, whose distinct shape they traced back to “decisions and developments at 

three critical junctures in the history of each nation,” namely responses to the reformation, 

democratic revolution, and industrial revolution. Drawing on Lipset and Rokkan, Collier and 

Collier (1991, 29) define a critical juncture as “a period of significant change, which typically 

occurs in distinct ways in different countries (or other units of analysis) and which is hypothesized 

to produce distinct legacies.” Critical junctures are understood to be brought about by external 

shocks or crises which upset previously existing institutional configurations and create an opening 

for far-reaching institutional change (Collier and Collier 1991, 30-39). 

While Collier and Collier’s (1991) definition equates critical junctures with institutional change, 

later discussions have problematized the relationship between critical junctures and their 

institutional ramifications. Capoccia and Kelemen (2007) argue that critical junctures should be 

seen as periods during which institutional change is particularly likely but that critical junctures do 

not necessarily result in change. They write: 

Tempting as it may be to equate critical junctures and change, this view is not 

commensurable with an emphasis on structural fluidity and heightened contingency 

that are the defining traits of critical junctures. Contingency implies that wide-ranging 

change is possible and even likely but also that re-equilibration is not excluded. If an 

institution enters a critical juncture, in which several options are possible, the outcome 

may involve the restoration of the pre-critical juncture status quo. Hence, change is not 

a necessary element of a critical juncture. If change was possible and plausible, 

considered, and ultimately rejected in a situation of high uncertainty, then there is no 

reason to discard these cases as “non-critical” junctures. (Capoccia and Kelemen 2007, 

352) 

Based on this understanding, the study of critical junctures requires analysts to determine whether 

a particular situation is indeed characterized by increased contingency (Capoccia 2015; 2016; 

Capoccia and Kelemen 2007)—in the words of Capoccia and Kelemen (2007, 348), whether there 

is “a substantially heightened probability that agents’ choices will affect the outcome of interest.” 

This entails an assessment of whether political agents “face a broader than normal range of feasible 

options” in making political decisions and whether “their choices among these options are likely 

to have a significant impact” on institutional development (Capoccia 2016, 91-92). If this 

assessment confirms heightened contingency—that is, if the constellation qualifies as a critical 

juncture—the second step of analysis reviews the impact of the agents’ choices on stability or 

change in institutional configurations. This approach to studying critical junctures requires a 

theory-guided analysis that is open to considering plausible historical counterfactuals (Capoccia 

2015; 2016; Capoccia and Kelemen 2007).  

The analysis presented here applies this framework to the case of Brexit. For each of the three 

dimensions of Brexit, it asks two questions:  

First, can Brexit be described as a critical juncture for Canada’s transatlantic relations? In other 

words, did it result in a period of heightened institutional contingency and an increased potential 

for change in the relationship? To address this question, the article draws on statements by 

politicians and political observers that reveal what they perceived as plausible options for 

institutional development after Brexit, as well as on expert interviews with diplomats that recall 

decisions that were considered and taken in the post-Brexit period. The reliance on these sources, 

rather than on speculative scenarios, ensures that the options for institutional development that are 



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considered in the analysis are indeed plausible and thus abide by what has been called the 

“minimal-rewrite rule” in counterfactual analysis (Mahoney and Barrenechea 2019, 316-318; 

Tetlock and Belkin 1996, 23-25).  

Second, did Brexit produce institutional change in Canada’s transatlantic relations? In addressing 

this question, this study follows Streeck and Thelen (2005) by distinguishing disruptive 

institutional change from various forms of incremental change. Disruptive change is characterized 

by institutional breakdown and replacement, while incremental change means that existing 

institutions survive, but the broader institutional system transforms due to processes of 

displacement (changing priorities between existing institutions), layering (adding new institutions 

on top of existing ones), conversion (applying existing institutions to new purposes), or drift 

(failing to adapt existing institutions to a changing environment) (Streeck and Thelen 2005, 18-

31; see also Mahoney and Thelen 2010).3 While the idea of critical junctures is often associated 

primarily with disruptive change (Capoccia 2016, 100-101), Streeck and Thelen emphasize that it 

applies to incremental change as well, as developments at “critical moments or periods” may 

initiate or accelerate incremental institutional transformation (Streeck and Thelen 2005, 20). 

Incremental change is not necessarily less far-reaching than disruptive change, though it may take 

longer to unfold (Streeck and Thelen 2005, 8-9). For the analysis of Brexit, this means that we 

need to assess both the form (disruptive or incremental) and the scope (continuity or discontinuity) 

of change in Canada’s transatlantic relations.  

The following sections apply this analytical model to the three major dimensions of Brexit: 

economic disintegration, political differentiation, and populist mobilization. We will then discuss 

factors that account for the identified patterns of institutional development. 

 

Brexit as Economic Disintegration  

The first dimension of Brexit is economic. Leaving the EU—at least if pursued according to the 

“hard Brexit” option eventually selected by the UK government—meant that the UK would no 

longer form part of the EU single market and customs union. For international partners such as 

Canada, this economic disintegration implied that the UK would no longer be covered by the trade 

agreements they had concluded with the EU, but also that new trade agreements with the UK, 

concluded outside of the EU framework, would become a possibility (Neuwahl 2021).  

The situation that Canada faced in transatlantic economic relations in the years after Brexit was 

paradoxical: the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) was fully negotiated by 

the time of the referendum, and the UK government had been one of its most enthusiastic 

supporters. The agreement continued to move through the approval process despite Brexit, leading 

to its provisional application beginning in September 2017. The provisional application included 

the UK, which was also one of the first states to complete the required domestic ratification of the 

agreement (Hurrelmann and Wendler 2024). Notwithstanding these developments, it was clear 

that CETA would cease to apply to the UK after the end of the Brexit transition period when the 

withdrawal from the EU would take full effect.  

 
3 Streeck and Thelen’s (2005) original typology also includes the mode of exhaustion (gradual withering away of 

existing institutions). This mode of incremental change is not included here as it has to be viewed, as Streeck and 

Thelen (2005, 29-30) themselves admit, as a mode of “institutional breakdown rather than change.”  



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By the time of the Brexit referendum, the UK was by far Canada’s most important economic 

partner in Europe, accounting for approximately 40% of Canada’s merchandise exports to the EU 

and Canadian foreign direct investment (FDI) in EU countries. As a project of economic 

disintegration, Brexit opened up opportunities for several plausible trajectories of change to these 

trade and investment patterns. On the one hand, many economists predicted that Brexit would lead 

to trade and investment diversion away from the UK. After all, British ports would no longer be 

attractive as entry points into the EU single market, and investment in the UK would be subject to 

increased uncertainty. “Even if the United Kingdom renegotiated its current [trade] agreements 

keeping all their provisions,” wrote Graziano, Handley and Limão (2020, 555), “they would likely 

be less credible and thus result in trade disintegration relative to a pre-Brexit world.” On the other 

hand, there were also commentators who perceived a potential for a further deepening of Canada-

UK economic relations, given that the UK would no longer be constrained in its trade and 

investment policy by the EU’s more protectionist member states. Less than 24 hours after the 

referendum, Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre took to Twitter to demand an “immediate” free 

trade deal “with an independent UK” (Figure 1). In the months that followed, the idea of a Canada-

Australia-New Zealand-UK (CANZUK) trade agreement gained popularity in Conservative 

circles on both sides of the Atlantic (Bell and Vucetic 2019). Considering vested interests in 

existing economic linkages, it would not have been realistic to expect disruptive change in Canada-

UK or Canada-EU economic relations, such as the wholesale collapse of one relationship at the 

expense of the other. However, noticeable forms of incremental change—for instance, divergent 

trade and investment patterns—were clearly a possibility. It is, therefore, plausible to view Brexit 

as a critical juncture in the economic dimension.  

Figure 1: Tweet by Pierre Poilievre about Brexit, June 24, 2016. 

 

Did Brexit produce this kind of change? We can approach this question by looking at the 

negotiation of new trade agreements but also by examining trade and investment patterns in 

Canada-UK and Canada-EU relations. In the first respect, change remained relatively limited. This 

is largely due to the positioning of the Canadian federal government, strongly supported by the 

bureaucracy of Global Affairs Canada, which emphasized economic continuity and maintaining 

good relations with both transatlantic partners. While Canada would have had the legal option of 

requesting amendments to CETA or even ending the agreement’s provisional application after 

Brexit had taken effect (Neuwahl 2021, 251), this option was never seriously considered. Post-

Brexit relations with the UK were built independently of the continued application of CETA, but 

only in ways that ensured that relations with the EU would not be undermined. A Canadian 

diplomat explained this approach in one of our interviews:  

Following the referendum, the experience we had working with the Europeans was 

that they were very emotional on this issue. We had a duty to be neutral. So, on 

everything we could do with the British, we were very transparent with the Europeans. 



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We had our interests at stake, and they understood it. But it was very important that 

we did not interfere with their own ongoing negotiations with the United Kingdom, 

that we did not cause material harm by what we said, that we did not take a position. 

For example, if we had publicly announced support for Brexit or publicly announced 

that we were going to have a super-ambitious agreement with the United Kingdom, 

that would have risked damaging our relationship with the European Union because 

the Brexiteers would have taken advantage of it. (Interview #10, Canadian diplomat, 

July 2020, translated from French) 

While Canada’s clear preference was for a “soft Brexit”, with the UK remaining in the EU’s single 

market and customs union, a trade dialogue with the UK was launched as soon it became clear that 

the UK government had decided to pursue a “hard Brexit” option (Interview #7, Canadian 

diplomat, July 2020). Canadian negotiators made sure to conduct these talks in a way that showed 

great sensitivity to EU concerns, for instance, by paying careful attention to label these talks a 

“dialogue,” rather than formal “negotiations” while the UK was still an EU member state 

(Interview #4, Canadian diplomat, July 2020). After the UK had left the EU, negotiations could 

formally begin. They were characterized by a mutual interest in ensuring continuity in Canada-

UK trade after the end of the Brexit transition period, but they were “real negotiations,” as a British 

diplomat insisted (Interview #16, UK diplomat, August 2021). Canada temporarily suspended 

talks in early 2020, when the publication of draft British customs schedules led to uncertainty on 

whether the concessions that the UK had promised to Canada would be granted more broadly to 

all trading partners. After this issue had been resolved, a Trade Continuity Agreement (TCA) was 

negotiated under considerable time pressure and concluded in December 2020.  

The TCA incorporates the provisions of CETA with some changes, especially on tariff quotas 

(Interview #11, Canadian diplomat, June 2021; Interview #13, Canadian diplomat, June 2021). 

Importantly, Canada did not grant a cheese quota to the UK, though it did agree to transitional 

measures until the end of 2023. Negotiations for a new Canada-UK trade agreement to replace the 

TCA were launched in March 2022, with the goal of reaching an agreement by 2024. However, 

these negotiations were suspended by the British government in January 2024 over continued 

disagreements with the Canadian side, especially on agricultural trade (British Chambers of 

Commerce 2024). A CANZUK agreement was not pursued; instead, the UK acceded to the 

Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement on Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), of which 

Canada is also a member (Stephens 2021). In sum, the new trade agreements linking Canada and 

the UK did not break substantial new ground, nor did they supplant Canada-EU agreements. They 

can be characterized as a form of layering that added new institutions without undermining existing 

ones.  

The second perspective that can be employed to assess the economic impact of Brexit looks at 

economic indicators for trade and investment relations. These reflect how Brexit has affected the 

choices of private economic actors. As Figures 2 and 3 show, there was no collapse of Canadian 

exports or outgoing foreign direct investment (FDI) to the UK. However, in both respects, Canada-

UK economic relations remained stable, while Canada-EU economic relations saw increases. This 

divergence in trajectories appears particularly pronounced after the end of the Brexit transition 

period on December 31, 2020. The pattern of Canada’s economic relations with European partners 

post-Brexit, while relatively stable overall, is thus closer to the scenario of trade and investment 

diversion away from the UK than to the scenario of intensifying Canada-UK linkages.  



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Figure 2: Canadian Merchandise Exports to the UK and the EU27 (monthly, in millions 

CAD) 

 

Data source: Statistics Canada. Table 12-10-0011-01 International merchandise trade for all countries and by Principal 

Trading Partners, monthly (x 1,000,000). Accessed August 11, 2023. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/

en/tv.action?pid=1210001101.  

 

Figure 3: Canadian FDI in the UK and the Rest of Europe (annually, in millions CAD)4 

 

Data source: Statistics Canada. Table 36-10-0659-01 International investment position, Canadian direct investment 

abroad and foreign direct investment in Canada, by industry and select countries, annual (x 1,000,000). Accessed 

August 11, 2023. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3610065901.   

 

In conclusion, although Brexit as an instance of economic disintegration was never likely to lead 

to disruptive institutional change in either Canada-EU or Canada-UK economic relations, it can 

 
4 Statistics Canada data for “Europe” in Figure 3 includes non-EU states, such as Switzerland and Norway.  

0.00

500.00

1,000.00

1,500.00

2,000.00

2,500.00

3,000.00

3,500.00

2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023

EU27 UK Linear (EU27) Linear (UK)

0

50,000

100,000

150,000

200,000

250,000

300,000

350,000

2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022

Europe w/o UK UK

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1210001101
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1210001101
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3610065901


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be seen as a critical juncture in the economic dimension: Brexit implied a potential for incremental 

shifts in priorities among Canada’s transatlantic economic partners. In the end, the change that did 

occur was subtle and is best described as an example of layering. New institutions for Canada-UK 

trade were added to CETA, but the latter proved to be the more impactful economic agreement, 

and Canada-EU economic relations outperformed Canada-UK relations, at least in the short term. 

There were no path-breaking changes, but the incremental changes that did occur point to a 

divergence in economic trajectories in relations between Canada’s two transatlantic partners. 

 

Brexit as Political Differentiation 

The second dimension of Brexit views it as an instance of political differentiation. In line with 

theories of differentiated integration in the EU context (Leuffen, Rittberger, and Schimmelfennig 

2022), this characterization refers to the fact that the UK’s withdrawal from the EU has meant 

greater diversity in political arrangements in Europe, as the UK would no longer be bound by, or 

even be required to coordinate with, EU foreign policy stances. As a result, the UK gained leeway 

in its bilateral relations with non-EU countries such as Canada and the ability to act more 

independently in plurilateral or multilateral settings.  

When assessing the impact of this change on Canada, it is important to keep in mind that the EU-

Canada Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA), which governs the political relationship, never 

constituted an exclusive rulebook comparable to CETA in the economic realm. Regardless of 

Brexit, Canada, the UK, and EU member states continued to collaborate in the context of 

international organizations and forums, such as the United Nations (UN), the North Atlantic Treaty 

Organization (NATO), or the G7/G20. In addition, Canada always had bilateral political relations 

with the UK which were not subordinate to those with the EU, as well as plurilateral pacts—such 

as the Five Eyes intelligence network—that involve the UK but not other EU member states. 

Expanding these forms of Canada-UK relations was possible without concluding a major new 

bilateral agreement like the TCA. One scenario of change enabled by Brexit was, therefore, the 

development of closer bilateral Canada-UK cooperation, no longer constrained by the need to 

coordinate with other member states in the EU institutions, or closer Canada-UK collaboration in 

pluri- or multilateral settings, taking advantage of the UK’s new policy flexibility. Once again, 

however, the opposite scenario—a loss of influence of the UK in Canada’s transatlantic relations—

was also within the realm of possibility. After all, the EU could be perceived as a strategically 

more important partner, and the EU Commission as more closely aligned politically with the 

priorities of the Liberal federal government than the UK under the leadership of Conservative 

Brexiteers. As a Global Affairs Canada official explained: 

[For] Canada, the EU is an enormous and important partner. Not just for upstream 

security issues, the kinds of preventive security that I talked about, [but also] for our 

fundamental prosperity; not just on market access, but also on regulating emerging 

important sectors, [as well as] on the values agenda and the ability to speak out for 

human rights and for the rule of law and for democracy globally. No one is going to 

put that at risk for some close ties with the UK. (Interview #6, Canadian diplomat, July 

2020) 

It was clear, of course, that Canada had an interest in protecting its political relationship with both 

the UK and the EU. Like in the economic realm, it was therefore not plausible to expect disruptive 

change—a collapse of existing Canada-UK or Canada-EU ties. Yet Brexit opened the door for 



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changes in the two relationships’ respective priorities. It can, therefore, be characterized as a 

critical juncture for Canada’s transatlantic political relations that raised plausible alternative 

options for incremental change. 

Once again, however, the amount of change that did occur post-Brexit proved more limited than 

what some observers had predicted. The Canadian government and foreign affairs bureaucracy 

maintained a strong commitment to protecting the strategic partnership with the EU. At the same 

time, the UK—not least through its High Commission in Ottawa—successfully emphasized its 

value as a political partner. As a British diplomat posted to Ottawa explained in one of our 

interviews, the High Commission devised a communication strategy that deliberately highlighted 

policy areas in which the UK was strongly aligned with the Canadian government’s priorities: 

The [communication] strategy flows from…perception surveys, and they have shown 

that while perceptions of the UK are generally very positive, the things that matter 

most on Canadians’ minds are the more traditional elements of the relationship, things 

like security, defence, historical connections, while some of the areas where actually a 

lot of the successful work is being done—let’s say, for example, on the science 

innovation side—don’t get quite that much attention. Part of the strategy has been to 

focus on the more modern elements of the relationship, for example, scientific 

cooperation, joint work on vaccines, climate science work. And then another strand 

has been around—and this is partly linked to Brexit—reminding Canadians that the 

fundamental values of the UK haven’t changed that much on issues like gender 

equality, LGBT+ rights, media freedom, inclusion, and diversity. Actually, the UK and 

Canada are very much in close agreement, and our Prime Ministers, Prime Ministers 

Trudeau and Johnson, on things like gender equality, women’s education, LGBT+ 

rights, are pretty much entirely aligned. And making more of that part of the 

relationship is especially important and also plays well to a Liberal audience here. 

(Interview #2, UK diplomat, June 2020) 

Canada, for its part, discovered that the UK was sometimes easier to work with than the EU. In 

the period after Brexit took effect, a small number of bilateral policy statements with the UK were 

issued without the EU’s involvement. For example, the Canadian and UK foreign ministers issued 

a joint statement in February 2021 condemning “targeted raids” against human rights organizations 

and independent journalists in Belarus (Global Affairs Canada 2021a). Jointly with the US 

Secretary of State, the two ministers also expressed concerns in March 2021 about “China’s human 

rights violations and abuses in Xinjiang” (Global Affairs Canada 2021b). The release of such 

foreign policy statements without EU involvement did not go unnoticed by EU diplomats 

(Interview #15, EU diplomat, July 2021). But members of the Canadian foreign affairs 

bureaucracy were themselves uneasy with the practice and how it might be perceived by the EU 

and moved to restrict its use. As an official in Global Affairs Canada explained: 

It's certainly true that [agreeing on statements is] faster with the UK because they don't 

have 27 member states. But there is a significance and importance in continuing to do 

things with the EU. And I constantly have to remind other parts of my department and 

the government about the importance of doing things jointly. And you might have seen 

the Belarus announcement today [June 21, 2021]: EU, Canada, UK, and the US, we 

did it all together. And we’d like to see that more when we can. The problem is that in 

this business, and it depends on your minister, but at the political level, they are really 

keen to get things done because things move so quickly, and it has to get out quickly 



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in this 24/7 communication environment. And when it takes too long to get approvals 

because the EU has to go to all their member states, sometimes we have to go out with 

a smaller group, even though we would much prefer to be going out with the EU. So, 

we’ve done our best and we will continue to try and make sure that we can act jointly. 

And it’s something [of which] I remind people, I think I said this before, it’s like your 

friends get divorced and you want to make sure that you maintain a good relationship 

and a strong relationship with both parties. (Interview #15, Canadian diplomat, June 

2021) 

While there was hence limited enthusiasm on the Canadian side for pursuing bilateral initiatives 

with the UK, the British government did not seek Canadian participation in what was arguably its 

boldest post-Brexit foreign policy initiative, the Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) agreement, 

announced in September 2021. The new security alliance, focusing on the Indo-Pacific, upset EU 

states—especially France—and caught the Canadian government off-guard. While Canada had 

little interest in the construction of nuclear-powered submarines, the initial focus of AUKUS, the 

fact that Canada had not been consulted raised concerns about being relegated to a second-tier 

partner within the Five Eyes alliance (Carvin and Juneau 2023). For this discussion of Brexit, the 

case of AUKUS is important because it underlines that ambitious forms of political cooperation 

between Canada and the UK, even where they would have been possible, were not pursued in the 

post-Brexit period.  

We can conclude that Brexit, as an instance of political disintegration, constituted a critical 

juncture because it implied increased institutional contingency: the potential that one of Canada’s 

transatlantic political relationships would develop more dynamically and thus take priority over 

the other. However, such a shift in Canada’s transatlantic relations did not happen. Only limited 

forms of new Canada-UK cooperation were added to the existing forms of transatlantic 

partnership. Overall, the picture is one of continuity: Canada-EU relations remained on an 

established trajectory, and Canada-UK relations saw only minor extensions.  

 

Brexit as Populist Mobilization  

The final dimension in which we can analyze Brexit focuses on the 2016 referendum and its 

aftermath is a case of populist mobilization. Along with the US presidential election that brought 

Donald Trump to power later in the same year, Brexit has been analyzed as part of a “populist 

backlash” against globalization that transformed patterns of political competition across Western 

democracies (Norris and Inglehart 2019). The international impact of Brexit, in this respect, lies 

in its potential to serve as a template for changes in the partisan politics of other countries, which 

may directly or indirectly influence these countries’ domestic and foreign policies.  

With respect to Canadian politics, it was unclear by the time of the referendum whether Brexit 

would be perceived as a relatively distant and non-salient foreign policy event or whether it would 

be subject to domestic politicization. Canada had, at the time of the referendum, not seen 

significant examples of the twenty-first-century wave of populism. The Trudeau government, first 

elected in 2015, was still in its honeymoon period with voters and enjoyed broad popularity. Its 

initial public statements on the referendum were low-profile; like other international allies of the 

UK, the Trudeau government supported the Remain position endorsed by British Prime Minister 

David Cameron. The opposition Conservatives were in the middle of a leadership race. Most of 

the 14 Conservative leadership contenders did not take a public position on the referendum, which 



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had deeply split their sister party in the UK. However, one of the perceived front-runners (and 

eventual winner of the leadership race), Andrew Scheer, enthusiastically embraced the Brexit 

narrative.5 In an op-ed published in the National Post before the referendum, Scheer argued that 

Brexit was necessary to protect “British political traditions” from being undermined by unelected 

supranational bureaucrats in the EU: 

Local decisions by local representatives – that’s the core of the Westminster system of 

responsible government that we inherited from Britain. Yet that’s no longer what’s 

practised in the UK. The supremacy of Parliament – the will of the people expressed 

through their elected representatives – is increasingly being replaced by the dictates of 

EU bureaucrats in Brussels. The consequence is less self-determination, less local 

decision making and less economic dynamism. Britain’s foreign economic relations 

with historic partners such as Canada are now subject to an effective veto from 

countries such as Romania and Bulgaria. Then there’s the host of EU regulations 

covering everything from hair dressers to vacuum cleaners and olive oil…A stronger, 

more independent and economically dynamic United Kingdom would not only be 

good for the country itself, it would also be good for Canada and the entire world. 

(Scheer 2016) 

Scheer’s intervention was remarkable not only because it embraced the anti-EU arguments 

promoted by the Leave campaign but also because it explicitly linked Brexit and Canadian foreign 

policy. It illustrates that Brexit had the potential to introduce populist politics and the transnational 

political cleavage—pitting green-alternative-libertarian (GAL) against traditional-authoritarian-

nationalist (TAN) positions (Hooghe and Marks 2018)—into Canadian foreign policy debates. As 

an instance of populist mobilization, Brexit can hence once again be seen as a critical juncture, 

with the potential to transform patterns of political competition not only in the UK but also in 

Canada. 

How much change has occurred in this respect? At the level of political party discourse, there are 

clear indications that Brexit-related arguments did indeed gain prominence in Canadian debates. 

After Scheer had been elected Conservative Party leader, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau quickly 

jumped on the bandwagon of Brexit’s domestic politicization. In a House of Commons debate in 

January 2019, nominally on the dismissal of Canada’s ambassador to China, he brushed off 

Scheer’s questions by ridiculing the opposition leader’s pro-Brexit stance. Scheer quickly retorted 

by pointing out that he had backed the winning side in the British referendum (Figure 4).  

Figure 4: House of Commons Question Period exchange between Andrew Scheer and Justin 

Trudeau, January 30, 2019 

Hon. Andrew Scheer (Leader of the Opposition, CPC): Mr. Speaker, it is clear that our 

international partners are quickly losing respect for the Prime Minister, and it is no wonder. 

After clowning around in India, inviting a convicted terrorist along, he was then forced to accept 

concession after concession from Donald Trump, all the while managing to anger our partners 

in Japan and Australia. Now Canadians are paying for his mistakes when it comes to our 

relationship with China. Once again, why did he show such weakness and wait so long to fire 

his own ambassador? 

 
5 The runner-up, Maxime Bernier, went on to found a populist political party, the People’s Party of Canada (PPC). 

However, Brexit was never a major policy or campaign issue for Bernier or the PPC. 



15         Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies, 17 (1)2024: 4-25 
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Right Hon. Justin Trudeau (Prime Minister, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, on China, we will continue 

to stand up for the rule of law; we will respect our international obligations, and we will always 

put the safety of Canadians first. We will take no lessons from the Leader of the Opposition, 

whose only pronouncement on foreign policy has been to come down on one side of the most 

divisive, destructive debate to happen in the U.K. for an awfully long time. People will 

understand that we take no lessons from the Harper Conservatives or from the current 

Conservative leader on Canada's place in the world. 

Hon. Andrew Scheer (Leader of the Opposition, CPC): The Prime Minister came down on 

the losing side of that debate in the United Kingdom, Mr. Speaker. Going back to China, for 

days the Prime Minister allowed Canada’s position to be weakened by having his own personal 

representative interfere with an independent process, politicizing the issue by giving a briefing 

in his old political constituency. Why did it take so long for the Prime Minister to fire his 

ambassador? 

Right Hon. Justin Trudeau (Prime Minister, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the member opposite just 

did it again: He came down clearly on one side of the most divisive foreign policy debate to hit 

the United Kingdom in a long time. He even boasted about it, saying that he was pro-Brexit 

before Brexit was cool. Quite frankly, we will take no lessons from the members opposite on 

the matter of Canada’s standing in the world and the great work we are doing on foreign policy. 
Source: Hansard Number 374, January 30, 2019. Accessed April 15, 2024. 

https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/house/sitting-374/hansard.  

 

In the federal election campaign later that same year, Scheer reiterated his support for Brexit, while 

Trudeau issued a tweet that linked Scheer’s stance to “far-right, American-style politics” (Figure 

5). These statements are important because they show that both leaders relished talking about 

Brexit even when there was no political necessity to do so. From the perspective of electoral 

strategy, this kind of discourse makes sense. Research on Canadian public opinion and media 

debates shows that Conservative voters, and right-of-centre media outlets such as the National 

Post, tend to respond much more favourably to Brexit and have a much more critical view of the 

EU than Liberal/NDP voters or centrist/left-of-centre news outlets (Hurrelmann, Mérand, and 

White 2021; Hurrelmann et al. 2023). In other words, when publicly positioning themselves in 

favour or against Brexit, Trudeau and Scheer were sending messages which they knew would be 

well-received in their respective political base. 

https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/house/sitting-374/hansard


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Figure 5: Tweet by Justin Trudeau about Andrew Scheer, October 7, 2019.

 

Despite these examples of domestic politicization, Canada did not see a sustained public debate 

about Brexit and its implications for Canadian foreign policy. Research on media discourses shows 

that public interest in Brexit was short-lived; the topic was discussed largely as a foreign policy 

event and disappeared from media headlines as soon as the parameters of the UK’s withdrawal 

and future relationship with the EU had been settled (Hurrelmann et al. 2023). While there is 

evidence that the GAL-TAN cleavage has become more relevant in Canadian politics since 2016, 

Brexit has not been one of the major driving forces of this development (Graves 2021). Rather, 

political debates that accentuate the cleavage have focused on the Trump presidency in the US, the 

response to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as “culture wars” on issues such as LGBTQ+ rights. 

That is not to say that Brexit has had no effects in the populist mobilization dimension. Even in 

the absence of larger-scale political resonance, its domestic politicization by Canada’s political 

parties—especially the Conservatives’ willingness to embrace explicit anti-EU rhetoric—has been 

noticed by Canada’s international partners. As a result, there is a clear weariness among diplomats 

from the EU and its member states about the potential of a Conservative government in Ottawa 

and how it would position itself towards the EU. In one of our interviews, an EU diplomat 

expressed this quite explicitly: 

[I]n diplomacy, you deal with all governments you get. And I mean, we had, I think, a 

good relationship with the Harper government, too. Canada is a democratic country 

that elects democratic governments. So that's not a problem. But I think it’s also fair 

to say that…the positions of the Liberal government are more in line with what I would 

call mainstream EU policy positions. The EU takes every government we get. But I 

think it’s also fair to say, now that European politicians have been pretty outspoken 

about it, how relieved they were that Mr. Biden is president in the US…that there are 

preferences for some administrations over others. (Interview #15, EU diplomat, July 

2021) 



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In sum, when it comes to populist mobilization, Brexit can again be seen as a critical juncture, 

with the potential to introduce new styles of debate and political cleavages into Canadian politics. 

The evidence on change in this dimension is mixed: Brexit has impacted the ways in which 

Canadian political parties perceive Canada’s transatlantic relations; it has, in an incremental 

fashion, introduced more explicit partisanship into debates about the country’s transatlantic 

priorities. In the terminology of Streeck and Thelen (2005), this change can be associated with the 

mode of conversion: debates about Canada-EU and Canada-UK relations have become less 

consensual and increasingly politicized. At the same time, the broader societal resonance of Brexit-

related debates, and their impact on the transformation of political cleavages that structure party 

competition, has remained limited. The changes in political cleavages that have occurred in Canada 

since 2016 do not appear to have been driven by Brexit.  

 

Brexit: A Critical Juncture, but Limited Change 

The analysis presented thus far has demonstrated that Brexit, in each of its three dimensions, 

implied a potential for change in Canada’s transatlantic relations. Brexit, therefore, deserves to be 

described as a critical juncture for Canada’s relations with its European partners. At the same time, 

the change that has manifested following the 2016 referendum was not path-breaking. Where 

Brexit did trigger changes, they remained incremental in form—layering in the first dimension, 

conversion in the third—and limited in scope (Figure 6).  

Figure 6: Summary of Findings 

Dimension of Brexit Critical juncture Institutional change 

Economic 

disintegration 

Yes: potential for new 

trade agreements and for 

divergence in Canada-UK 

and Canada-EU trade and 

investment patterns 

Limited, incremental change: 

institutional layering of new trade 

agreements; signs of divergence 

between Canada-UK and Canada-EU 

economic relations 

Political 

differentiation 

Yes: potential for change 

in priority accorded to 

Canada-UK vs Canada-EU 

political relations 

No meaningful change: continuity in 

Canada-UK and Canada-EU relations; 

no major initiatives that shift priorities 

Populist mobilization Yes: potential for domestic 

politicization of Brexit, 

contributing to rise in 

GAL-TAN political 

cleavage 

Limited, incremental change: 

institutional conversion through 

increased politicization of party 

discourse about transatlantic relations, 

but limited resonance in broader public 

debates 

 

This raises the question of why Brexit did not bring about more far-reaching institutional change. 

My analysis has identified three main factors. First, throughout the period examined here, Canada 

was led by a federal government interested in continuity in transatlantic relations. The governing 

Liberal Party has long supported strong relations with the EU and its predecessor institutions. It 

was under the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau—the current Prime Minister’s father—that 



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formal relations with the European Communities were first established (Mahant 1981; Potter 1999, 

19–50). European integration appeals to the Liberal Party’s vision of foreign policy because it 

reflects the party’s commitment to liberal internationalism; Canada-EU relations are also in line 

with the Liberal Party’s preference for economic diversification away from the US (Hurrelmann 

2020, 122). In addition, as mentioned previously, the Liberal government perceived a strong 

alignment with the policy priorities of the European Commission, for instance, on issues such as 

climate change. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau emphasized this alignment when addressing the 

European Parliament in 2017: 

[O]ver the course of our historic partnership, Canada and the EU have stood side-by-

side on the things that matter. Things like maintaining global security. Advancing the 

values of peace and justice. And ensuring our peoples’ prosperity through trade and 

investment. We’ve worked together on issues like climate change, and the rights of 

women and girls around the world. And, ladies and gentlemen, I am confident that we 

will achieve tremendous things together in the years to come…The European Union 

is a truly remarkable achievement, and an unprecedented model for peaceful 

cooperation. Canada knows that an effective European voice on the global stage isn’t 

just preferable – it’s essential. (Trudeau 2017) 

Because of its perceived like-mindedness with the EU,6 the Canadian government did not pursue 

policy options in Canada-UK relations that could be seen as undermining the Canada-EU 

relationship. This Canadian stance may have been different if Brexit had occurred under a federal 

government led by the Conservative Party (Interview #8, Canadian diplomat, July 2020), whose 

foreign policies have tended to emphasize traditional alignments with the UK and the 

Commonwealth.  

The second factor that contributed to continuity in Canada’s transatlantic relations post-Brexit was 

the fact that Brexit as a political event was quickly overshadowed by other developments that took 

political leaders’ attention. The most important of these were the Trump presidency in the US 

(2017–21), the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–22), and the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine 

(ongoing since 2022). These issues not only took away much of the oxygen from what could have 

been fiery transatlantic debates about Brexit; they also, by and large, put the emphasis on policy 

matters on which Canada, the EU, and the UK perceived shared values, interests, and objectives: 

defending the multilateral international order against Trump’s attacks; limiting the spread and 

economic damage of COVID-19; countering Russian aggression. They hence encouraged the three 

transatlantic partners to collaborate (Interview #5, German diplomat, June 2020; Interview #10, 

Canadian diplomat, July 2020). The crisis context was also a strong disincentive to pursuing post-

Brexit strategies that would have added further disruptions to the transatlantic relationship.  

Thirdly, and relatedly, the quick succession of international crises in the post-Brexit years also 

meant that the attention of political leaders in transatlantic relations was mostly not focused on 

Brexit. This lack of political “bandwidth” was another factor that militated against major post-

Brexit initiatives, whether to strengthen Canada-UK or Canada-EU relations. A Canadian diplomat 

posted to France explained this with respect to the priorities of the Canadian government:  

 
6 The EU is, of course, not a homogenous entity. A differentiated analysis of EU politics needs to distinguish the 

various EU institutions and analyze the distinct political priorities of the 27 member states. However, such 

complexities usually remain unacknowledged in Canadian discourses about the EU.  



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And meanwhile, Canada was very, very focused on renegotiating NAFTA. We had a 

new Minister of Foreign Affairs at the beginning of 2017, Freeland, who was devoted 

almost exclusively to the American question. Overall, in the past five years, [Canada 

and the EU] have had an increased appetite to work together, but realities forced us to 

focus on questions of vital interest on which Canada-EU relations were not necessarily 

a priority, neither for Brussels and Paris nor for Ottawa. (Interview #9, Canadian 

diplomat, July 2020; translated from French)7 

With political leaders occupied by crises elsewhere, the political management of Brexit in the 

Canada-UK and Canada-EU relationships was largely left to bureaucratic politics. It was driven 

by diplomatic actors with a good understanding of what it takes to align potentially competing 

international relationships, professional training in how to shield international relations from 

partisanship in domestic politics (Interview #3, Canadian diplomat, June 2020), and an aversion 

against anything that might rock the boat. Several of our Canadian interviewees stressed that the 

desired continuity in transatlantic relations required active efforts to keep the EU engaged, to 

ensure that its debates about “strategic autonomy” would not result in a “Fortress Europe” 

mentality and a turn away from transatlanticism (Interview #6, Canadian diplomat, June 2020; 

Interview #12, Canadian diplomat, June 2021). This perception contributed to a policy approach 

on the Canadian side that carefully emphasized the need to balance Canada-UK and Canada-EU 

relations.  

The combination of these three factors—the Liberal government in Canada, the emergence of 

crises that turned political attention away from Brexit, and the dominance of bureaucratic 

politics—made Brexit significantly less transformational at the policy level than even veteran 

diplomats would have expected. An EU diplomat posted to Ottawa reflected on this in one of our 

interviews:  

Was Brexit a challenge? I have to say that we approached Brexit thinking it would be 

a very big challenge. And somehow it was—I’ll be careful with the expression—it was 

a kind of an uneventful big event, because we had discussed all that so long, we were 

so well prepared [for] what was going to happen when Brexit takes place…We were 

thinking, how are we going to react if things turn sour between London and Brussels 

and how will Canadian public opinion react, what are we going to do? And finally, it 

went relatively smoothly overall. (Interview #1, EU diplomat, June 2020) 

 

Conclusion 

While existing scholarship on Brexit has focused mainly on the UK’s and the EU’s internal 

politics, the UK’s withdrawal from the EU had international ramifications. For Canada, Brexit was 

relevant as an instance of economic disintegration, political differentiation, and populist 

mobilization. As we have seen in this article, Brexit constituted a critical juncture for Canada’s 

transatlantic relations in each respect, characterized by increased institutional contingency and 

several plausible options for institutional development. However, the change that did unfold in the 

 
7 The American focus on renegotiating NAFTA, along with the general lack of enthusiasm in both the Trump and 

the Biden administration for major new trade agreements, also meant that the UK government’s hope for the quick 

negotiation of a UK-US trade agreement was not realized. Such an agreement would have put pressure on Canada to 

intensify its economic relationship with the UK.  



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years after Brexit remained incremental and relatively subtle; it can be characterized as limited 

institutional layering in the economic dimension (addition of new Canada-UK institutions without 

undermining Canada-EU institutions) and limited institutional conversion in the populist 

mobilization dimension (increased politicization of transatlantic relations in party discourses 

without broader societal resonance).  

These patterns of institutional change emerged from the preferences of the governments of the day 

(especially on the Canadian side), the development of major international crises that competed 

with Brexit for political attention, and the dominance of bureaucratic politics in addressing the 

transatlantic fallout of Brexit. While it is hence tempting to characterize the aftermath of Brexit in 

Canada’s transatlantic relations as “uneventful,” we must bear in mind that incremental change 

will take longer to unfold than disruptive institutional transformation. Analysts of Canadian 

foreign policy and transatlantic relations are therefore well-advised to continue monitoring the 

described instances of institutional change to assess their longer-term policy effects, and also to 

examine if they prove stable should there be changes in government on the Canadian, British, or 

EU side—as well as potentially in the US.  

 

  



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https://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2017/02/16/address-prime-minister-justin-trudeau-european-parliament
https://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2017/02/16/address-prime-minister-justin-trudeau-european-parliament


24         Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies, 17 (1)2024: 4-25 
                                         ISSN 2562-8429 

 

Interviews 

Interview #1, EU diplomat posted to Ottawa, conducted on Zoom, May 2020. 

Interview #2, UK diplomat posted to Ottawa, conducted by phone, June 2020. 

Interview #3, Canadian diplomat, Global Affairs Canada, conducted on Zoom, June 2020. 

Interview #4, Canadian diplomat, Global Affairs Canada, conducted on Zoom, June 2020. 

Interview #5, German diplomat posted to Ottawa, conducted on Zoom, June 2020. 

Interview #6, Canadian diplomat, Global Affairs Canada, conducted on Zoom, June 2020. 

Interview #7, Canadian diplomat posted to EU member state, conducted on Zoom, July 2020. 

Interview #8, Canadian diplomat posted to EU member state, conducted on Zoom, July 2020. 

Interview #9, Canadian diplomat posted to EU member state, conducted on Zoom, July 2020. 

Interview #10, Canadian diplomat posted to EU, conducted on Zoom, July 2020. 

Interview #11, Canadian diplomat posted to EU member state, conducted on Zoom, June 2021. 

Interview #12, Canadian diplomat, Global Affairs Canada, conducted on Zoom, June 2021. 

Interview #13, Canadian diplomat posted to EU, conducted on Zoom, June 2021. 

Interview #14, Canadian diplomat, Global Affairs Canada, conducted on Zoom, June 2021. 

Interview #15, EU diplomat posted to Ottawa, conducted on Webex, July 2021. 

Interview #16, UK diplomat posted to Ottawa, conducted by phone, August 2021.  

 

  



25         Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies, 17 (1)2024: 4-25 
                                         ISSN 2562-8429 

 

Published by the Centre for European Studies at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada 

Available online at: https://ojs.library.carleton.ca/index.php/CJERS/index 

 

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Carleton University. 

 

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This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivs 4.0 

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ISSN: 2562-8429 

 

© 2024 The Author(s) 

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mailto:CJERS@carleton.ca
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