As the familiar architecture of postwar transatlantic order strains under the weight of a more confrontational American posture, Canada and the European Union are quietly exploring something without precedent: a formal associate membership that would bind a North American democracy to the European project. The proposal emerges not from ambition alone, but from a shared recognition that rules-based cooperation requires new institutional vessels when old ones begin to leak. In the long story of democratic nations organizing themselves against uncertainty, this moment may mark the first deliberat