4 Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies, 17 (1)2024: 4-25 ISSN 2562-8429 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. 5 Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies, 17 (1)2024: 4-25 ISSN 2562-8429 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 6 Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies, 17 (1)2024: 4-25 ISSN 2562-8429 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 7 Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies, 17 (1)2024: 4-25 ISSN 2562-8429 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.” 8 Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies, 17 (1)2024: 4-25 ISSN 2562-8429 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. 9 Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies, 17 (1)2024: 4-25 ISSN 2562-8429 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. 10 Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies, 17 (1)2024: 4-25 ISSN 2562-8429 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 11 Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies, 17 (1)2024: 4-25 ISSN 2562-8429 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 12 Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies, 17 (1)2024: 4-25 ISSN 2562-8429 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 13 Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies, 17 (1)2024: 4-25 ISSN 2562-8429 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 14 Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies, 17 (1)2024: 4-25 ISSN 2562-8429 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 ISSN 2562-8429 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 16 Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies, 17 (1)2024: 4-25 ISSN 2562-8429 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) 17 Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies, 17 (1)2024: 4-25 ISSN 2562-8429 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 18 Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies, 17 (1)2024: 4-25 ISSN 2562-8429 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. 19 Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies, 17 (1)2024: 4-25 ISSN 2562-8429 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. 20 Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies, 17 (1)2024: 4-25 ISSN 2562-8429 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. 21 Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies, 17 (1)2024: 4-25 ISSN 2562-8429 REFERENCES Adler-Nissen, Rebecca, Charlotte Galpin, and Ben Rosamond. 2017. “Performing Brexit: How a Post-Brexit World is Imagined outside the United Kingdom.” British Journal of Political Science and International Relations 19 (3): 573–591. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/1369148117711092. 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Accessed February 14, 2024. https://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2017/02/16/ address-prime-minister-justin-trudeau-european-parliament. http://nationalpost.com/opinion/andrew-scheer-a-strong-britain-is-an-independent-britain http://nationalpost.com/opinion/andrew-scheer-a-strong-britain-is-an-independent-britain https://ssrn.com/abstract=3834048 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.2.1.369 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 The Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies (CJERS – formerly Review of European and Russian Affairs) is an open-access electronic academic peer-reviewed journal: articles are subject to double-blind peer-review. Topics relate to the European Union, its Member States, the former Soviet Union, and Central and Eastern Europe. The journal is published by the Centre for European Studies, an associated unit of the Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at Carleton University. CJERS aims to provide an accessible forum for the promotion and dissemination of high-quality research and scholarship. Contact: Carleton University The Centre for European Studies 1103 Dunton Tower 1125 Colonel By Drive Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6 Canada E-mail: CJERS@carleton.ca Creative Commons License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivs 4.0 Unported License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Articles appearing in this publication may be freely quoted and reproduced, in unadapted form only, provided the source is acknowledged. We request that for any online postings, you do so by providing the title and/or abstract with the DOI link back to the original version of the article on the journal's website. ISSN: 2562-8429 © 2024 The Author(s) https://ojs.library.carleton.ca/index.php/CJERS/index mailto:CJERS@carleton.ca https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/