President-elect Trump seems like he’s been having a lot of fun trolling Canada. He has proposed making Canada the 51st state, among other things. Granted it’s been a long time since the United States added any territory, much less a state. None of that is likely to happen, of course, but well-known Canadian and “Shark Tank” star, “Mr. Wonderful” Kevin O’Leary, has just such a merger proposition – sort of.
Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary proposed on Thursday that the United States and Canada eliminate the border between them to form a united front against China and Russia.
Trump suggested in a Christmas Day Truth Social post that Canada should become the United States’ 51st state, which the president-elect asserted would boost the northern country’s economy and provide it with military security. O’Leary, on “The Big Money Show,” said the potential economic and security benefits of the countries uniting are attractive prospects.
O’Leary said:
There’s 41 million Canadians, basically the population of California, sitting on the world’s largest amounts of all resources, including the most important, energy and water. Canadians over the holidays the last two days have been talking about this. They want to hear more. And so there’s obviously a lot of issues and more details, but what this could be is the beginning of an economic union. Think about the power of combining the two economies, erasing the border between Canada and the United States and putting all that resource up to the northern borders where China and Russia are knocking on the door.
Now there’s a thought.
There are some considerations, of course, that the President-elect and Mr. O’Leary aren’t taking into account. Canada, yes, is a big country, and yes, has a lot of resources. What Mr. O’Leary is proposing appears to be an economic union, not necessarily a political one, wherein the two countries would form some kind of European Union-style arrangement, with a common currency and lowering of trade barriers; that’s kind of a halfway point between the status quo and Donald Trump’s annexation idea.
There’s also a problem. The EU is far from a more perfect union. Having states as disparate as Germany on the one hand and the PIGS nations (Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain) sharing a common currency isn’t without its problems; and while Canada and the United States are more alike than, say, Norway and Greece, there are still some serious differences.
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We are forced to agree with Mr. O’Leary on one thing though: Nobody wants Justin Trudeau negotiating any such deal. Trudeau is the Canadian version of California’s Gavin Newsom; great hair, not much under it. So Mr. O’Leary is proposing to start talks on his own, on behalf of 41 million Canadians. He continued:
So secure that, give a common currency, figure out taxes across the board, get everything trading both ways, create a new, almost EU-like passport. I like this idea and at least half of Canadians are interested. The problem is the government’s collapsing in Canada right now. Nobody wants [Canadian Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau to negotiate this deal. I don’t want him doing it for me. So I’m going to go to Mar-a-Lago. I’ll start the narrative. The 41 millions Canadians, I think most of them would trust me on this deal.
Color me skeptical. Not that Kevin O’Leary isn’t a smart, savvy, economically literate guy; he is. But he can’t negotiate on behalf of the Canadian government; to paraphrase from a famous American cinema masterpiece, he’s just pulling our lariat.
Still, some kind of economic union would work out better than a political one. If Canada were to be annexed, of course, it wouldn’t be in America’s best interest to have all of Canada making up one big state; not with the voting patterns of much of eastern Canada. Make each of the 10 provinces into separate states, perhaps; there are also the three territories (Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut) to contend with.
Honestly, though, this isn’t going to happen. Canada will probably just mull along, and as for the president-elect’s demands, well, the United States has most of the leverage here, so it’s likely that Ottawa will make some effort to accommodate him; and if the expected happens, Canada’s Liberal Party dumps it in the next election and Pierre Poilievre ends up as prime minister, things could change quite a bit.
Gotta admit, though, it would be nice to be able to drive to the lower 48 without going through Customs.
Two other famous Canadian political commentators also weighed in on the topic:
