Manifest Destiny Redux

By the time this article is published, Donald Trump will be one day into the start of his second term as president. Is anyone else already exhausted?

In my last article I wrote about Trump threatening to impose a 25% tariffs on imports from Canada. That topic is so two weeks ago. While Trump has not lost interest in tariffs, his more recent “suggestion” is that Canada join the United States (and he’ll take Greenland too).

This has spawned much “debate” on X including discussions as to how big the US should be (hint: big).

While the “threat” has boosted Canadian patriotism to levels rarely seen outside of Olympic Hockey Arenas, it has had a downside too; it has allowed politicians to fake being tough and pundits to prophesize doom in their efforts to gain followers (don’t judge them; they need to make a living too and the media is collapsing around them).

Could Canada join the US?
Anything is possible but let’s get one thing out of the way immediately; the US is not going to invade Canada. Even if Trump’s trade allegations are valid, the US isn’t about to invade an ally because it subsidizes its dairy and lumber industries. This is 2025, not 1812.

Peaceful integration seems unlikely as well. Despite Trump’s claim that “many people in Canada love being the 51^st state,” the thought of becoming American isn’t popular anywhere in Canada as a recent poll has shown.

It’s much more popular an idea in the US than in Canada but not overwhelmingly so and I suspect it’s only popular because people haven’t put a lot of thought into it.

Putting aside our different attitudes towards gun ownership and levels of crime, are Americans ready for the seismic shift in politics that would occur?

The New American Politics
Politico points out that if Canada joined as a single state (it wouldn’t but we’ll get to that) it would get two senators and “there’s little question they’d be Democrats.” The House is a little more complicated. Canada would get 45 seats putting it just behind California’s 46.

The resulting presidential map would look like this:

“With Canada’s 47 electoral votes (45 House seats + 2 senators), Democrats would enter an election with 253 seats, Republicans would have 202, and there’d be 85 up for grabs.” I don’t think many Republicans are going to vote to integrate a new state that will see US politics shift to the left for the foreseeable future. Fox’s Jesse Watters suggests that an easy solution would be to “split Canada into two states—Western Canada for Republicans, Eastern Canada for Democrats—keeping the electoral balance.” That would work if all Westerners were conservative, but they aren’t and you can’t exactly mandate them to vote Republican if you want to at least pretend you live in a democracy.

Convincing republicans to vote for another California would be skating uphill (I’ve done it, it’s hard), but the problem is bigger than that since it’s unlikely that Canada would enter as a single state. The most likely scenario is that it enters as 10 new states (and I don’t know what happens with the 3 territories. Graft them onto Alaska maybe?). Looking at one map someone (sorry don’t know who) put together and the new USA would probably have 7 Democratic States and 3 Republican ones. What Republicans would agree to shifting the Senate 8 seats in the Democrats’ favor?

Think outside the box
While I don’t think assimilation is going to happen anytime soon, it is a fascinating thought experiment. However, I think the conversation is too…traditional. Sure, statehood is an option, but the US has many unincorporated territories which might reveal a better approach to a union between Canada and the US.

I’ve been lamenting for some time now that Canada’s parliamentary system is broken. There are several problems including only about 40% of the vote is required to establish a majority government and since Canada lacks an executive with real authority, the Prime Minister is for all intents and purposes a dictator for 4 years. Something along the lines of how Puerto Rico functions might make sense.

• “Puerto Rico is U.S. territory with self-governance in many areas but limited representation and influence at the federal level. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens but face restrictions in federal voting and receive different treatment in funding and taxation compared to states.

• The President serves as the head of state and government

  • Federal laws signed by the president apply to Puerto Rico unless explicitly exempted.

  • Executive Orders are similar to federal laws.

  • Defense and Foreign Policy are the responsibility of the president as commander-in-chief.

This would be a good starting point for a negotiated merger. The final model might be something along the lines of what happens in the UK where both Scotland and England have their own parliaments but share the same head of state. This UK/Puerto Rico model might see Canadians retaining parliament instead of being represented in Congress with some powers being shifted to power to the presidential level and the country falling somewhere between a US state and a separate nation with respect to its independence.

Canadians might have a problem giving up their foreign relations powers (the military is likely a smaller issue – no pun intended). The biggest issue would likely be presidential elections. If the President is going to be the Canadian head of state, Canadians would demand a say in the election. This, as we’ve shown before, is where Americans might object (both to the politics of it and the need to modify how the Electoral College works).

The biggest question at the moment is “how serious is Donald Trump?” Few people seem to think he’s serious about the idea, largely due to his history of trolling and exaggeration.

Kevin O’Leary, of Shark Tank fame, does appear to be serious about the idea, stating there is a “potential for a stronger economic union between the United States and Canada without compromising Canadian sovereignty.” If so, I’m willing to listen. I’ve lived long enough in both the US and Canada to know that both countries have something to offer. I believe some form of merger is worth exploring. Canada and the US are each other’s biggest trading partners, and we share many of the same defense concerns including the Arctic. There are, however, enough cultural differences that would make the merger difficult, and encouraging assimilation through bullying, as Trump appears to be doing, is not the best approach nor a recipe for a successful long-term relationship.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.