So much fuss and bother has been made on both sides of the border over Donald Trump’s presumed intention to annex Canada as the 51st state that people seem to have forgotten that the issue goes back at least as far as an October 21, 1774 Congressional “Address to the Inhabitants of the Province of Quebec.”
As Mark Anderson in his archival "The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony: America’s War of Liberation in Canada,1774–1776" explains, “The Address warned, 'You are a small people, compared to those who with open arms invite you into a fellowship. A moment's reflection should convince you which will be most for your interest and happiness’.” (Shades of Donald Trump.)
The invitation was refused, and the Continental Army invaded, hoping to persuade Quebeckers to join the fight against the British, before being defeated at the Battle of Quebec in 1775 and humiliated at the subsequent Paris peace talks from which they emerged with nothing to show for their troubles. However, it should be noted that American bellicosity was motivated not only by a hankering for expansion; it was also understood as a war measure against the threat of British conquest.
The issue did not go away but materialized once more in the 1781 Articles of Confederation, specifically Article XI. The Founding Fathers speculated on the advisability of Canada becoming the 14th colony, an outcome so desired that it could have been carried without a vote from the plenum of states. The legislative momentum eventually came to a head when President James Madison declared war on Britain, culminating in the 1812 invasion of Canada, a military operation which again fared poorly for the Americans.
This was by no means the end of the story. Richard Preston points out in "The Defence of the Undefended Border: Planning for war in North America, 1867-1939" that there were several other occasions when America entertained designs on Canada. For example, the U.S. had developed an operational plan to invade in 1903 as a strategic deterrent against a possible conflict with Britain. In 1916, the War College proposed its own plan of attack with a view to thwarting a possible German invasion, and once again in1935, presumably to provide against the looming threat of an increasingly belligerent Japan.
Of course, Trump is not planning to invade Canada, and it is more than likely that the entire 51st fracas is a piece of Trumpian theater as a prelude to solving the fentanyl crisis and to establishing a renegotiated trade deal in order to redress a fiscal imbalance. Trump does in fact wield a powerful economic threat, reminiscent of the 1774 Congress, which proclaimed the following: “[W]e will have no trade, commerce, dealings or intercourse whatsoever, with any colony or province, in North-America, which shall not accede to, or ... [does] violate this association, but will hold them as unworthy of the rights of freemen, and as inimical to the liberties of their country.” Trump’s tariffs are a contemporary form of the congressional proclamation. I believe Trump is in his rights to proceed as he has and that Canada has been, as the president claims, remiss on border security, far too close to Communist China, and profiting on tariffs at American expense.
In other words, Canada has been a hypocritical, unreliable, and smugly self-righteous ally, a state of affairs that the U.S. no longer intends to tolerate. Canadians should not be spooked by the memory of former hostilities with the U.S. or to regard the elephant south of the border as a trampling menace. Trump is correct. Canada in its current degraded iteration might not exist without the economic largesse, the career opportunities, and the protective military umbrella the U.S. has so generously furnished over the years. Where is the gratitude and the spirit of reciprocity?
But there is a major irony to the current situation. The real invasion is not coming from outside Canada’s borders but from within, that is, from its own Liberal/NDP government, a hodgepodge of globalist cum socialist cum autocratic elitists who are driving the country into the ground for their own ideological and remunerative purposes.
The nation has been hijacked by the state, which is Canadian only in the sense that it happens to operate in Canada, but without sharing in the country’s founding history, the courage of its citizens manifested in two world wars, and in the fortitude of its pioneers. The leaders of the invading army, supported by a pack of media sumpters, are decadent politicians like Justin Trudeau, Chrystia Freeland, Mark Carney, and Jagmeet Singh, who enjoy a particular fondness for Communist China.
As the Western Standard points out, the government is silent on selective 100 percent tariffs from China, although Ottawa regards 25 percent U.S. tariffs as an “existential threat.” Canada’s tariffs on Chinese EVs in favor of Sweden’s (now bankrupt) Northvolt does not significantly change the dynamic. Justin Trudeau has made no secret of his admiration for China’s “basic dictatorship.” Indeed, Trudeau invited the Chinese military to train in Canada. (The site chosen for cold-weather maneuvers was Petawawa, Ontario.) As for Canada’s new, unelected prime minister, the statist tecnocrat and fiscally deceptive Carney, his Brookfield Asset Management company is keenly interested in seizing development opportunities in China, further expanding its business in Beijing.
These are the sellouts who have, in effect, invaded Canada. They would much prefer that Canada become The People’s Republic of China’s 24th province rather than the United States of America’s 51st state. That is the real invasion.
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