There’s talk around the America First movement about annexing Canada and making it some kind of incorporated territory of the United States. At issue here is the $200 billion+ trade imbalance with our neighbor, and our expensive role as insurers of their global safety. People are saying that President-elect Trump is merely floating another one of his amusing and controversial trial balloons to stir the pot. It’s not funny. We don’t want Canada.
Reviewing Canada’s protectorate status and insisting they pay their fair share? Yes. Coercing them to enforce the border between the two countries, thereby stopping illegal immigration from the north, is long overdue. But don’t saddle the stars and stripes with this underperforming leviathan whose population centers are replete with high-echelon left-wing community organizers. While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation is a heartening development, don’t forget these people elected him in the first place.
Take it from Canadian Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, a Trump-esque populist that the New York Times calls “the favorite to become Canada’s next leader.” Poilievre has railed against Canada’s existing national government, and characterized his country as “broken and riddled with chaos.” He has a double-digit lead in the polls. Why annex this mess when it looks like Canadians might finally be coming to their senses?
If we make Canada a territory, before you know it they’ll be asking to become our 51st state. Then we’ll have to let them vote, and while the heartland may contain hundreds of thousands of traditionalist common sense voters, it’d be extremely risky to chance U.S. election outcomes on woke enclaves like Montreal.
It’d would be nice to have magical places like Vancouver Island and Lake Louise under the jurisdiction of a theoretical Director of Canadian Assimilation (Sen. Ted Cruz?). The McKenzie Brothers would be textbook additions to MAGA; easy to imagine them calling Adam Schiff a “hoser.” We could resurrect Triumph’s hit “Fight The Good Fight” and make it emblematic of Canada’s new stateside sensibilities.
But taking on Canada in any incarnation would be a drag on America First. Why incorporate Canada when a politically-neutral winter wonderland like Greenland is there for the taking. What has Denmark done for us lately?
The Gulf of America? Whatever. Stripping control of the Panama Canal from the Chicoms, Day One, or thereabouts. Trump should make Canada pay up—like he did China, Mexico, and NATO—and clean up their border enforcement act. If Canada does that, and elects Poilievre, we should just leave them alone.