FIRST READING: Canadian politicians rail against annexation as American counterparts laugh

Although Trump keeps pledging U.S. statehood for Canada, even close allies aren't treating it seriously

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Published Jan 09, 2025  •  Last updated 0 minutes ago  •  5 minute read

President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. Photo by AP Photo/Evan Vucci

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TOP STORY

As Canadian politicians begin to react seriously to an annexation proposal by U.S. president-elect Donald Trump, among U.S. political circles it is still being treated as an elaborate in-joke.

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Any mention of annexing Canada has been almost entirely absent from the public statements of Republican politicians, and even among Trump allies it’s only really being brought up for a laugh — if it’s mentioned at all.

On Tuesday, both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre issued written statements articulating their objection to Canadian annexation.

“There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States,” wrote Trudeau. “Canada will never be the 51st state. Period. We are a great and independent country,” wrote Poilievre.

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Provincial premiers also went on record to decry their country’s absorption into the U.S., with Ontario’s Doug Ford telling Fox News that he is a “proud Canadian” and that Canada is “not for sale.”

This level of earnestness is not being reciprocated among U.S. politicians.

The public statements and social media feeds of Republican senators — who would need to approve Canadian statehood — have been almost entirely quiet on the issue. Similarly, it has not come up at all in Congressional or Senate hearings. As of press time, the last mention of the word “Canada” in the U.S. Congress was New York representative Elise Stefanik delivering a memorial to a constituent who grew up on the “New York-Canada border.”

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, long one of the loudest Trump allies in the U.S. House of Representatives, has responded very seriously to some of Trump’s other nationalistic boasts.

When Trump pledged to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America this week, Greene quickly drafted a bill to codify the name change into law.

But it’s a different story with Canadian annexation, which she’s called a “troll” to oust Trudeau from power. “President Trump has liberated Canada after trolling Trudeau by calling him Governor of Canada,” she wrote in a Jan. 6 post.

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Laura Loomer, a close Trump ally who was on his 2024 campaign team, has weighed in on the annexation issue just once on her social media, with a Dec. 3 post calling it “very funny.”

Billionaire Elon Musk — a Canadian joint citizen who is heading up Trump’s new Department of Government — has similarly mentioned 51st statehood only as a slam against Trudeau. “Girl, you’re not the governor of Canada anymore, so it doesn’t matter what you say,” Musk wrote in an X.com reply to Trudeau’s “snowball’s chance in hell” statement.

Given that this week also saw Musk endorsing Poilievre to be Canada’s next prime minister, he seems to be anticipating the continuance of a sovereign Canada.

In recent weeks, Trump has also pledged to seek the purchase of Greenland from Denmark, for which he even dispatched a delegation led by his son, Donald Trump Jr.

This week saw the younger Trump in the Greenland capital of Nuuk, pitching residents on the benefits of U.S. annexation. “Greenland loves America and Trump!!!… They just want to be able to utilize some of the incredible resources that they have and allow themselves, their country, and their kids to flourish,” he wrote in an X post.

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Even as Trump Jr. spearheads one of his father’s North American annexation plans, he’s made no mention whatsoever of doing the same for Canada.

Democrats and other Trump critics, meanwhile, don’t seem to be treating the 51st state comments as anything other than bluster, largely for the reason that statehood for Canada would be devastating to Trump’s own Republican party.

The addition of 40 million mostly left-leaning voters would virtually guarantee decades of Democratic dominance in Washington, something that was brought up this week by David Axelrod, a former strategist for U.S. president Barack Obama. “No Republican would seriously support statehood for Canada. Too many electoral votes!” he wrote in an online post.

An analysis by New York Magazine cited Trump’s Canada comments only as evidence that the president-elect appeared to be pursuing the “madman theory” — a doctrine wherein a political leader acts erratic and unpredictable in order to more easily obtain international concessions.

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The idea of Canada as 51st state began as an off-the-cuff comment made by Trump during a Nov. 29 dinner meeting with Trudeau. In what multiple attendees described as a kind of comedic roast, Trump went on an extended tangent detailing how Canada should become the newest state, with Trudeau remaining as its governor.

It then blossomed into social media posts by Trump in which he repeatedly referred to Trudeau as “Governor Trudeau.” On Tuesday night, he posted two maps depicting Canada as U.S. territory, one with the caption “Oh Canada!” That same day, he also gave a press conference saying he would use “economic force” to acquire Canada.

“You get rid of that artificially drawn line, and you take a look at what that looks like, and it would also be much better for national security,” he told reporters at his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort.

IN OTHER NEWS

Amid repeated pledges by U.S. president-elect Donald Trump to annex Canada, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May has resurrected a decades-old proposal for British Columbia to form an independent nation with the Pacific Northwest states of Oregon and Washington. “Have we got a deal for you; free health care. Universal free health care. No more one-year-olds who suddenly fall off the Medicaid list and their parents are in the news because they’re trying to do a GoFundMe to get their daughter to a doctor,” May told a Parliament Hill press availability last week. She also pledged “safer streets,” “strict gun laws” and free abortions, and said if the United States allowed the secession of its West Coast it would “get rid of all these states that always vote democrat.”

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This 100-minute interview between Jordan Peterson and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre could well end up ranking as one of the most-watched things in the history of Canadian politics. It has about 3.5 million views on YouTube, which alone puts it in the running to rival the top 10 most-watched Canadian TV broadcasts last year. While a lot of those YouTube viewers are probably Americans, a new Abacus Data poll found that one fifth of Canadians saw some or all of the video – with that rising to one in three among men aged 18 to 29. These would be shockingly high numbers even for a prime minister, much less a conservative leader of the opposition.

With Trudeau now promising to eventually resign probably, it’s freed up Liberal MPs to start talking about abolishing the carbon tax. “It does make things more expensive, regardless of what people say about it,” Ken McDonald, a longtime opponent of the tax, told the National Post. “There should be no policy sacred cows,” said another. Although carbon pricing was contained within the Liberals’ 2015 campaign platform, it proved to be one of their most singularly unpopular policies. In Atlantic Canada, in particular, Liberal support took a nose dive almost immediately after the introduction of carbon pricing.Get all of these insights and more into your inbox by signing up for the First Reading newsletter here.

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