Is it something that will happen in the future ? Even once Trump is gone ? Or is this only something that is attached to Trump ? And finally will Canadians be radically changed from A United States takeover of Canada ?
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Canada should be so lucky.
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As long as each province gets equal electoral votes. Canada is one of those places that is deeply conservative, but is led by the nose by socialist whackos.
You also have a problem of it at this point being a province of India. If you don’t want to further dillute the US tribe, you would have to think it through. You can’t just revoke all the passports that have been given out. But you can nuke residencies and other visas, until a US desirebale rate is found, and you can provide some kind of incentive for the millions of Indians, Bangladeshis and Punjabis with Canadian passports to, you know, go back. Some kind of tax break and good loan terms if they are able to start a succesful business in their home countries.
We don’t want them all to leave, a little Hindu blood is good. But something defenitely would have to be done about the obscenity that it is now.
Also you might have to make curry and other smelly foods illegal for a period. This is only 1/4 joking.
I think many Canadians would welcome the amount of power joining the US would give back to each province vis-a-vis the federal government. Not to meantion each citizen.
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The United States is not taking over anything. We’ve invited them to join our polity, and it will be up to the people. I understand that some provinces are voting to join.
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They should extend the invitation to the entire American continent. I wonder what results that would give.
A nice thought experiment.
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Just the amount of value that would get freed up by dismantling the gigantic Canadian regulatory structure (most of which would be illegal in the US) makes me salivate.
It would be like giving the Planet Earth a bonus.
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There’s a large number of Indians already here as well mostly on the west coast along with the entire state of Texas but probably not as much as many of the Mexicans and individuals from Central America or South America we already possess too.
If they ever tried that here as they have in Canada I have always joked that it would be an Indian Mexican civil war here between Spanish and Hindi.
Like a North America or Americas Union?
That would be problematic for many different reasons.
I hear Canadians all the time say that they wish that they were a part of the United States but if that ever happens Canadians would lose all healthcare along with worker protections.
There isn’t much of either here.
Wow. I hear quite the opposite sentiment, glad they’re not, but also pissed by how much US influence they have to bear.
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I’ll respond sideways…ah, there are no countries anymore. Sadly.
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I think there are really two different questions here. One is whether Trump is serious about the idea, and the other is whether the United States would actually try to make Canada part of the U.S. after Trump is gone.
Trump has repeatedly talked about Canada becoming the 51st state, so it clearly isn’t just a one-time comment. But that doesn’t necessarily mean annexation is some inevitable future event. There’s a huge difference between political rhetoric and actually trying to eliminate another country’s sovereignty. Canada is an independent country with its own government, institutions, military, culture, and national identity.
And honestly, I think a U.S. takeover would probably change Canadians more by making them more conscious of being Canadian. We’ve already seen Trump’s rhetoric produce a stronger sense of Canadian national identity and opposition to becoming part of the United States.
So ironically, the more serious the idea of annexation became, the more it could reinforce the very Canadian identity that would make annexation difficult. Even if Trump disappears from the political scene, the underlying question of how closely Canada wants to align itself with the U.S. could remain. But that’s very different from saying Canada is inevitably going to become American.
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You can be Canadian and part of the US, like Texans are (or, if I read right, used to be) Texan and part of the US. There are many towns in Canada that are split along the border. I am near one such one. Many Canadians choose to live in the US side, even while they work in the Canadian side, and feel as the only real difference having a bunch of guns.
Canadians, at least once you leave major cities, are very pragmatic people. They are not uptight about it, and can clearly see how a simple mayority vote is leaving them in the hands of derranged city socialists.
Unless being part of the EU makes Frenchmen less French?
In fact, you find that, in general, Canadians (at least ones that have been here 2 generations or more) identify with their province, not Canada. Quebec already has a strong separatist movement, and Alberta a not negligible one.
America is a continent, so Canada already is American.
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Alberta would almost be guaranteed to go.
They were not happy about Big Brother shutting down their pipeline.
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Anyway, there’s only one real way to find out.
Referendum baby!
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I see what you’re saying about being Texan and American at the same time, but I think there’s a pretty important difference between having multiple identities and having your country absorbed into another country.
Someone can be Québécois, Albertan, and Canadian without those identities contradicting each other. The fact that some Canadians identify more strongly with their province doesn’t necessarily mean they’d be indifferent to losing Canada as a sovereign country. The same thing applies to the French/EU comparison. France voluntarily joined a political union while remaining an independent country; that’s quite different from becoming part of another country.
And I’m not sure I’d put much weight on the idea that Canadians outside the major cities are simply more pragmatic about it. Canadians can be pragmatic while still considering national sovereignty important. Also, the fact that some people live or work across the border doesn’t necessarily tell us how they’d feel about their entire country being incorporated into the U.S.
I do agree with your broader point that Canadian identity isn’t necessarily as uniform as Americans sometimes assume. Quebec and Alberta have very different political cultures, for example. But that actually makes the question more complicated rather than making annexation seem inevitable. You could just as easily have several different regional identities all strongly resisting being absorbed into the same American political system.
And yes, geographically Canada is part of North America, so in that sense Canadians are already “American.” But that’s using “American” in the continental sense. It would technically be true to say that Canadians are American because they live in America, in the same way it would true to say that Mexicans are American because Mexico is in the Americas.
Not if you ask Quebecors.
I dare you to explain the difference to me.
Not long ago, the word “country” didn’t exist, or referred to country vs town. What existed where states.
They are more pragmatic because, for them, the difference between them and somebody from the US is cultural, which is almost 0, rather than ideological, which is a preoccupation of city socialists.
How they feel about it, and why they do it, tells you a lot. Those people that have to cross the border every day to go home, do you think they would prefer simply for the benefits they get from the sleeping quarters apply to the rest of their sphere? What keeps them coming back to Canada is things like family, friends, history of employment, not national pride.
Canada is not even a nation properly speaking, it is still technically a British colony. You still have to swear loyalty to the Queen of England in order to be granted citizenship. This may not mean much administratively, but it tells you something about where some feeling of identity linked to sovereignty might lie.
Yeah, I think the only practical way would be province-by-province. Annexing Canada in one gulp sounds infeasable.
It’s part of America. North America is the northern subcontinent of America. Which is why it is referred to as North America.
Yes, Mexicans are Americans also.
It’s part of the genius of Trump. He’s probably not particularly invested in the necessity of it. He is making a point to the Canadian “leadership.”
It helps the point that it actually is not unimaginable. A large part of the point is that millions of Canadians would love it, for the very reasons Trump bashes the Canadian political “leadership.” If push comes to shove, and the stars align, he might go for it and reap great benefits.
A referendum, or one per province, might be a place to start.
I once had a job delivering parcels in an anglophone Quebec suburb/town, which was fairly rural. Once, duing an election, the person had to sign a paper and, without thinking it might be weird or sound out of place, he asked “can I write in Trump?”