Canada on Trump’s proposed union: Thanks, but let’s just Be friends
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. TORONTO—The last time the U.S. seriously floated the idea of taking over Canada, it was 1866, and the dust had just settled on the Civil War.
Still angry that the English tried to help the Confederacy, a U.S. politician introduced a bill in the House of Representatives calling for the annexation of British North America. The bill didn’t go anywhere.
And neither will President-elect Donald Trump’s idea of Canada becoming the 51st state, say Canadians of all stripes. Canadians have largely tolerated Trump’s trolling of their soon-departing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. But the president-elect’s explicit call on Tuesday to coerce Canada into the U.S.—by “economic force," if necessary—has raised patriotic hackles in the normally easygoing country of 40 million people.
“One of the reasons Canada exists is to be separate from the U.S.," said Gregory Tardi, a lawyer who worked as a senior counsel to Canada’s House of Commons. What is now Canada was populated in part by thousands of British Loyalists who fled the American Revolution and wanted to stay with the British Empire. The country still retains many of its British roots, including counting King Charles III as its head of state.
To join the U.S., Canada would have to shed its constitutional monarchy and become a republic, which would require approval from both houses of Canada’s federal parliament and the legislatures of each of Canada’s 10 provinces, said Tardi. Both chambers of the U.S. Congress would also need to authorize a new state.
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