Since he began his second term, U.S. President Donald Trump has made it clear he’d like a side of Canada with that. Nothing about Trump leads us to believe he is aware of the conceit—enshrined in international law, no less—that the post-World War II international order rests on the existence of stable and territorially fixed states. Still less does he believe that maintaining this order is something the United States should have a hand in.
Having raised the specter of manifest destiny in his inauguration speech, Trump has, in all seriousness but with his customary lack of gravitas, trumpeted U.S. territorial expansion into Panama, Greenland, and Canada.
Canada would like a word about that—and not one of the polite ones. And not just with Trump, but also with the U.S. media that seems determined to treat his threats as an amusing pastime.
Among many Americans, Trump’s increasingly serious threats toward Canada raise questions like “does he realize how absurd this sounds?” and “what real issues are these unserious threats distracting us from?” Among Canadians, these threats raise questions like “so what else could we be doing with 13 percent of the world’s uranium output?” and “where is the nearest Canadian Armed Forces recruitment center?”
Canadians are well aware that Trump will be Trump and that the U.S. political world apparently doesn’t feel like they can do anything about it.
Many Canadians grew up on Saturday morning television beamed in from across the border, and they’re now wondering if, in that sleepy, sugary haze spent watching Scooby Doo and Schoolhouse Rock, there was some confusion. Those “checks and balances” that Americans are always going on about—was that a breakfast cereal?
These days, Trump is a fountain of annexation rhetoric. He writes treaties on an Etch-A-Sketch and has flitted from half-baked justification to over-the-top rationale while attempting to justify imposing punishing tariffs on Canada, a longtime ally and trading partner. There’s no massive trade imbalance between the two nations, and every Canadian TV news reporter should do giant air quotes when they say “fentanyl crisis” in reference to the U.S.-Canada border. Only 43 pounds of fentanyl has been seized at the northern border.
Recently, Trump has been more direct about what he hopes to achieve with tariffs. It’s, oh, you know, the dissolution of Canada. The White House has doubled down on this, and the Trump administration is hardly the only voice in the very large and extremely well-armed United States that’s talking about erasing the world’s longest undefended land border.
Perhaps most alarming to Canadians is that discussion of what Canada might look like as the 51st state has recently increased—even in the most respectable of media. While Trump publishes his imperial fantasies on Truth Social, supposedly more sober voices are busily penning magical imperialism in the pages of respected U.S. news outlets. Whole new genres are being birthed around the premise that the prospect of annexing Canada is, at the very least, kind of neat to think about.
In a New York Times article, Peter Baker imagines that Canada as a state would be a modest electoral boon for Democrats. Former New York Rep. Steve Israel, a Democrat, agreed with that sentiment; Baker quoted Israel as saying, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I strongly agree with Donald Trump. Canada is largely left of center, and making it the 51st state means more Democrats in Congress and Electoral College votes, not to mention providing universal health care and combating climate change.”
The banality of this take is breathtaking. Canada is a country, and a complex one at that. It contains multitudes, mulleted dudes, and many nations, including the First Nations and other indigenous groups. While many Canadians find themselves saying, “But we were trading partners, sometimes allies, and we had a treaty,” they would do well to remember that exact feeling as Canada goes forward with the truth and reconciliation process.
Not everyone at the New York Times can discuss this topic as dispassionately as Baker. As early as Jan. 11, Ross Douthat lowered himself to the occasion and took a strong stance in support of cartoon villainy in a piece titled “O Canada, Come Join Us.” He was all but salivating over the possibility that “[Trump’s] rule may be remembered as the period when not-Americanness finally ceased to be a plausible basis for a nation-state.”
Over at the Associated Press, Will Weissert helpfully informed readers that designating Canada as the 51st state would require “only a House majority,” but that “Senate filibuster rules require a minimum of 60 votes in the 100-member chamber to bring a bill to the floor.”
Even if these were the only people talking about the war crime of annexation in the same way one might talk about Rock the Vote, or a U.S. Senate bill to designate July 1 as the National Start of July Day, Canada would have reason to be pissed.
The sheer number of liberal (or, at least, not actively Trumpist) Americans who seem to view the occupation of Canada as either a Democratic poll booster akin to a Taylor Swift endorsement or a whimsical thought experiment is alarming.
While White House correspondents for the New York Times may be immune to shame, more and more everyday Americans are suffering from an unusual new condition. There are reports that, immediately after posting a fun little annexation goof on their social media platform of choice, many are being struck by the almost physical weight of the combined hatred of more than 40 million Canadians bearing down on them.
American doctors have struggled to explain this phenomenon. Luckily, we—or literally any other Canadians—are ready and willing to shed some light on this mysterious ailment plaguing our neighbors. But to understand this condition, it is first necessary to examine some of the things that set our historically intertwined nations apart.
As Canadian lore would have it, Canada is a sovereign nation home to more than 40 million people. It is distinguished from the United States by its distinct history, culture, system of government, and relationship with the letter “U.”
To many Americans, Canada is a fanciful concept, the birthplace of a number of popular American celebrities but populated only by two talking beavers and a faun, with people who leave their front doors unlocked for Michael Moore and have either really great or comically dystopian health care coverage.
When Americans like Baker coldly analyze the possibility of Canada joining the United States, they seem to imagine a Canada-U.S. relations fairy waving their magic wand, taped like a hockey stick, and transforming the country into the 51st state.
When Canadians discuss this, they picture exactly two scenarios. In the first one, Canada is so economically debilitated by a deliberate U.S. policy of impoverishment that it ceases to function as a nation and has no choice but to be quietly absorbed. In the second scenario, tanks roll across the border and bombs fall from the sky until Canadians are forced into a union at the world’s largest gunpoint—just one more star on a frankly already too busy flag.
Canadians are experiencing a growing sense of betrayal and alarm, and they’re comfortable letting their once-chummy trading partner know that. Americans are experiencing the sensation of their previously friendly neighbors attempting to channel their collective anger into a physical force strong enough to melt the laptop of anyone who, like Baker, sits down to calmly opine that “Canada, a land of socialized health care, friendly immigration policies and a commitment to protecting the environment, is not exactly MAGA territory.”
If Americans find themselves feeling poorly, perhaps getting ruthlessly dunked on online, or surprised by an unusually hot lithium battery on their thighs, it may be because they responded to talk of annexing Canada by saying “let me run the numbers” or “let’s run our flag up their pole and see who salutes.”
The only cure to their ills and the only correct response to Trump’s threat is to loudly say, “No, absolutely not, we will not entertain this moral abomination.” Everyone can agree that the worst possible outcome for all here is that Sting ends up writing a song about the situation.
Speculating about which U.S. political party Canada would vote for is not in good taste. The vast majority of Canadians would—if the franchise were even extended to them and they were not, as would be likely, granted the status of Puerto Rico on ice—be voting for separatist parties.
Canadians understand when Americans joke or publish clever articles in prestigious newspapers about annexation being bad for Republicans or good for their chances of finally getting a halfway sensible health care system, that they are not seriously supporting warfare—economic or otherwise—upon Canada. Jokes over jingoism is the Canadian way, after all.
What Canadians need Americans to understand is that they don’t have the luxury of treating Trump’s threats as a joke or as a sideshow in the circus of U.S. politics. Canadians need Americans to take the situation half as seriously as we do.