#WTH O [No!] Canada

Sorry, no.

For reasons that are slightly mysterious to many (most?) of us, Donald Trump has been on a crusade to add Canada as America’s 51st state. The President has big eyes — Greenland! the Panama Canal! Gaza! — but some of those imperial ambitions make strategic sense. Neither Greenlanders nor Panamanians may want us, but it’s not crazy for us to want them. The Canal is a critical shipping route which Communist China has been eyeing for years; and Greenland has vital access to the Arctic region that may well become the scene of the 21st century’s Great Game. Gaza… even Trump doesn’t want to actually keep it. And Canada? Sorry, no thanks.

Here’s why: Canada’s per capita income is half the per capita income of the State of New York. If Canada became it’s own state, its per capita income would be ranked at number 49, just above Mississippi. ’s The entirety of Canada’s GDP would rank just below California, Texas, and New York’s. And each of Canada’s ten provinces would be at the tail of median earnings in our (nominally united) 60 states, with Canadian provinces sitting at rock bottom in ranks 51-60.

Then there’s politics. Oy. As our podcast guest, ex-Canadian and current AEI scholar Colin Dueck lays out in painful detail, Canadians are, for the most part, well to the left of Americans. So, most of those 10 new states (or one super state), would line up in the Democratic Party column in states and at the federal level. Yay!

None of this means that Canada and the United States shouldn’t work together cooperatively. A lot could be done with a better Canadian government that, as Colin says, doesn’t obsess over the left-wing commandments — DEI, climate, men being women, women being men… On defense, for example, there's a huge upside to partnering with the frozen north. But right now, Canada is far from serious about defense matters, spending much less than its NATO commitment of two percent of GDP. Yes, Canada is a regular contributor to UN peacekeeping operations around the world, which is worth much less than it seems. Colin imagines US-Canada cooperation best:

What I think would be great, and again, I don't think this is going to happen under the Liberals, but I think it could happen under the Tories if they managed to win, is that you would really focus on the Arctic. You would drop the emphasis on... It really has been an emphasis for some time now in the Canadian military, by Trudeau's own orders, you would drop the emphasis on DEI, progressive priorities, climate, gender, multilateralism, peacekeeping, and you would just get serious about the Arctic. That could involve building a new base with access for US forces. Making sure that critical minerals and oil and gas are in the hands of Western powers rather than China and Russia. Keeping a closer eye on the airspace. Beefing up coordination over NORAD. Cooperating on missile defense. Building heavy icebreakers. The Russians have a lot of them, the United States doesn't.

Is there anything to the “Canada is better than the United States” trope? We hear this a good deal in echo chambers like Reddit, where Canadians and American Canado-philes like to preen about national health, tolerance, and poutine. But the realities belie Canadian pride: Of the 38 countries in the economic powerhouse club of the OECD, Canadian salaries are most out of sync with housing prices. Cell phone costs are exorbitant — data goes for twice the EU rate, which itself is skyhigh. Canada’s much-vaunted hospital system could barely stand marginal COVID rates during the pandemic, with hospitals near collapse. And no wonder: Canada has only two “acute care” spots per 1000 residents (Germany has six).

Here are some more Canada lowlights, summarized in the nation’s own National Post at the end of the pandemic:

• Per Bloomberg, in a survey of private and public debt accumulated in the first year of COVID alone, Canada blew away the field, with “an overall debt burden equivalent to 352 per cent of GDP.”

• A World Bank ranking of the world’s major ports ranked “the performance of the world’s 370 major ports […] the Port of Vancouver ranked 368 out of 370.” (Before you sneer too haughtily, LA and Long Beach were 369 and 370.)

• Per Flight Aware, Toronto Pearson loses in the air as well, with “52 per cent of all flights out of the airport experiencing some kind of delay.” (It’s fourth worst in the world for cancellations too!)

There’s more. Check out the whole depressing article. And oops, I almost forgot the silver lining: while government services, including health care provision, are uniformly appalling, with wait times that rival the UK’s own nightmarish National Health Service, you can liberate yourself from the burdens of living in Canada, thanks to the nation’s frighteningly efficient MAID program. Clean your house for free? Mince around in a cute black and white uniform? Nope. MAID stands for Medical Assistance in Dying, and as you may have heard on our podcast, #WTH is Going on with “Death on Demand” in Canada? on the topic, the bureaucrats in Ottawa won’t help you with your handicap, or find you a psychiatrist for your mental illness, or get you the necessary chemotherapy if you have cancer. But they will kill you within 48 hours. Sorry, not sorry.

About now, you may be wondering why Donald Trump wants Canada? Possibly, his deep personal antipathy to the Western hemisphere’s teen heartthrob Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau prompts him to needle the Canucks. Or maybe he just wants Canada’s natural resources. Who knows for sure? But Trump’s bizarre crusade has cost conservatives dearly. Any hopes of reform in Canada rest on the ouster of Trudeau’s Liberal Party from office after a disastrous and lengthy run. (Canada’s economy has tanked on Trudeau’s watch.) And in January, it looked like the Libs were toast, with Conservatives regularly polling 25 points ahead of the left. Until Donald Trump started talking about taking over Canada and began levying tariffs.

Ostensibly, Trump’s beloved on-again-off-again tariff war on Canada is tied to fentanyl crossing the border into the U.S. But there is a small problem with that. How small? Canada represents 0.2 percent of all border fentanyl seizures. In the first round of Trump tariff wars, the President proposed to levy tariffs twice as onerous on Canada than those on China, something that justifiably incensed the Canadians. In this latest round, Canadian political parties across the spectrum united to promise harsh retaliatory measures.

Meanwhile, Pierre Poilievre, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, has watched his lead in the polls for federal elections this year evaporate. Instead, there has been a surge of nationalistic anti-Americanism that has buttressed the always-anti-American left, and has left Poilievre struggling. Can this be fixed? Yes, with sensible policies, an end to baiting, an end to threats of tariffs, and the restoration of Trudeau’s failures to Canada’s front pages. Absent that, America will look north to Trudeau mark II.

HIGHLIGHTS

Why did you leave Canada for the U.S.?

CD: I left for a reason. I love Canada, but I always felt that it was a little too left-wing for me. This goes to the point of why Americans, especially Republicans, might not want to annex Canada. There was an interesting study just a few days ago that if Canada was admitted as the 51st state, it would be overwhelmingly democratic. Let's say 50 seats. You're adding another California with two Democratic senators, maybe 40 Democratic Party House members and a smattering of Republicans from the prairies and interior BC and rural Ontario. But that would pretty much lock in democratic dominance of Congress no matter what the rest of the country does. I was always more of a conservative prairie boy, and I still am.

How entrenched is the liberal party in all the apparatuses of the Canadian government?

CD: Ever since Justin Trudeau's father, Pierre Trudeau, became prime minister in the late '60s, that elite has been left of center. It's entrenched in the state, in the judiciary, in the political system. Even when they lose elections, if this sounds familiar, they don't admit it really. They continue to think they run the country. It's the cultural and intellectual elite. It's the media elite, and the liberal party is the party of that elite.

Why is the Canadian economy so much worse off comparatively than America’s?

CD: There have been competent economic managers, especially when the Tories were in power. But also, I have to say a liberal finance minister like Paul Martin in the '90s was not that bad. But what Trudeau did was just embrace the most left-wing conventionalities on spending taxes, regulation and used the shutdown as an excuse, just like in so many parts of the Western world, and inflation went through the roof. This is one of the reasons why the Tories were coming back strong over the last couple of years is because their new leader, Pierre Poilievre.

Has Pierre Poilievre been able to seize on Canada’s poor economy as an electoral issue?

CD: Poilievre made the case very convincingly that Trudeau was wrecking the country's economy through just sheer negligence and ideological fanaticism. That what was needed was to free up the energies of Canadian citizens by scaling back the role of government. That's the conservative that Poilievre is.

How many conservatives are there in Canada?

CD: There's plenty of conservatives in Canada, but there's less than there are here. The liberal elite is even more fully entrenched. That's in economic terms as well. What you end up with is these kinds of policies which are actually dysfunctional and it's a point of pride. They actually pride themselves on it because they say, "We're not like the US. We don't want to be like the US." The defining feature of modern Canadian liberalism is that it's to the left of the United States. If that means the economy is less dynamic, then so be it, because the important thing is to prove that you're more progressive than Americans.

Is Donald Trump right to lump Canada and Mexico together in his criticisms of the border and our economic relationships with our neighbors?

CD: I think from a US point of view, it has to be said objectively that the Mexican border is a much worse problem, clearly in terms of... Whether it's transnational crime, drug trafficking, fentanyl, you name it. Okay. Then on the economic side, the Mexican relationship with the US is more uneven because you really can go south of the border and find much lower labor costs, all the rest of it. There's a asymmetry there. Canada is more of a comparable economy. What we tend to do up north is rip stuff out of the ground and sell it to the rest of the world, including the United States.

It's often timber, oil and gas. Then of course auto manufacturing has actually flourished. Ontario and the American Midwest are intimately connected through auto parts and that industry. Look, I think there's some validity in the sense that the Canadian dairy industry, for example, is heavily regulated and subsidized. Trump has a point. It's often the case that however he phrases it, there is a kernel of truth to that. Overall, I guess I tend to think that NAFTA wasn't so bad, and that the renegotiated version of it under Trump 1.0 wasn't so bad and that... I don't know why it requires dismantling. The strongest case I think you can make actually against Canadian practices is on the defense side, not the economic side at all. I don't know if you want to talk more about that, but I think the economic case is not terribly strong. It's certainly going to hurt Canada, and I don't know how it helps the US other than with a few low hanging fruit that are mostly already addressed.

Is immigration policy an issue in the upcoming Canadian elections?

CD: There was a long period of time where Canada seemed to be immune from the controversy that was spreading through Europe and the United States about immigration, legal or illegal. A part of it is Canadian geography obviously makes illegal immigration hard. What are you going to do? You're going to escape from the United States across the Pacific. It's tough physically to do. The other thing is Canadian immigration in some ways was actually stricter, even under the Liberals, which is it emphasized a point system that prioritized skills and wealth rather than family unification. That made it less controversial. If you had actually tried to introduce in the US Congress a set of rules that were the ones used by Trudeau's liberals, it would've been probably dismissed as racist and right wing, which is an interesting thought.

In spite of that, the high level of legal immigration, which as you say has just continued year after year and it's changed the face of Canadian cities. Most things don't really have a problem with that ethnically. You have an Asian-Canadian minority that's very large now, 20%, in a lot of suburban... Vancouver and Toronto, it's the dominant ethnicity. It is not really a racial issue, but it is an economic issue. Poilievre has pointed to this as a problem, which is it's driven up the cost of housing, for example, to where it's almost unaffordable for a lot of young couples and it's become an issue. Now you have a critical mass of Canadians say... Including a lot of first and second generation Asian-Canadian immigrants saying, "Enough already. We need to get the levels of immigration under control," and it's now an issue. That was one of the many issues where Justin Trudeau was losing as of the beginning of this year.

How does Trump’s perspective of immigration in the U.S. resonate with Canadian conservatives?

CD: To this day there's a discourse around immigration where the way that, for example, Donald Trump talks about it just wouldn't be acceptable. That's true. Even somebody like Pierre Poilievre, when he talks about it, he mostly frames it as an economic issue, housing costs and so on. But there is also a implicit element of have we had enough immigration for now? Can we have a pause? I'm sure there's people who have demographic concerns as well as economic ones.

But there are interesting cases. The one really standout case actually, you've had ethno-religious minorities from India who've come over and tried to set up shop and then hammer India, which caused a huge stink with Modi's India. Trudeau managed to single-handedly wreck Canadian relations with India, and then had to learn to his frustration that most countries in the world now value connection to India more than they value the connection to Canada. What this really came from was the fact that you actually did have violent separatist movements based in Canada. Then the Indians said, "Enough, and we're going to target them for assassination." This really happened, but Canada did not handle it nearly as well as the United States did.

The conservative party and Pierre Poilievre were poised to blow-out the liberals in the upcoming elections, but the polls have changed massively in the liberals’ favor. What happened?

CD: In two words, Donald Trump. Donald Trump happened. You can look if you want to at the polls, it's stunning. The first couple of weeks after Trudeau agreed to step down, there was no change. We were still headed to a Tory landslide for all the reasons we've talked about. It looked as though the Tories were even going to clean up in suburban Toronto, suburban Vancouver, really breaking out from their traditional western small-town base. That's where things were headed. After Trump was inaugurated and he started talking about 51st state, annexation, that really shocked people. It grabbed their attention.

Do Canadians care about what is happening in U.S. politics?

CD: Canadians obsess about the United States. The reverse is not true. If a president of the US says he plans on making Canada the 51st state and pokes fun and says it repeatedly, you better believe it's going to get people's attention. He has their attention and not in a good way. It has actually triggered a massive upsurge of just good old-fashion patriotic feeling. It reminded people across the board, left, right, center, what they don't like about Trump. He's very unpopular in Canada. The liberals have been able to rally on the basis of... They managed to change the subject, and in a way Trump changed the subject for them. The subject used to be, don't the liberals suck? The answer was, yes, they suck. Now the subject is, are we going to stand up to the big bad bully, Donald Trump, or not? The answer is, yeah, we're going to stand up to him.

What’s the conservative party like in Canada?

CD: The Canadian Conservative Party is a center-right party with what would be recognizably conservative views for Americans on a lot of issues, including taxes, spending. Poilievre calls himself a small government conservative, not a big government conservative. He wants to roll back government compared to Trudeau, which obviously is desirable. Then on a lot of cultural and social issues, although probably not to the same extent as the Republican Party, it is center-right. It is a meaningfully Conservative Party. It's not a Angela Merkel version of conservatism, but it also doesn't go as far as the AFD. What's happened in Canada is the Conservative Party has never really been divided in the way that over issues like globalization, free trade, immigration, foreign policy.

It is a party that's for free trade because the base of the party, as I said, is Western producers who export. There's no disagreement between the elite of the Conservative Party and the voters on this. It's a party that has a strong dose of populism, which has a rich heritage in Western Canada going back a century. Sometimes that populism expresses itself in left-wing ways, but more often in recent years it's right of center. But the Tories under leaders like Stephen Harper and Poilievre have done a good job of bridging any potential disagreements within the party.

Do you think Canadian conservative leadership would get along with Trump?

CD: The irony here is it's the most pro-American party. Of all the parties that might be part of a Canadian government, the NDP is the most hostile to the US. The liberals pride themselves on quietly... We're more progressive than the United States. The Tories are the ones since at least Brian Mulroney in the '80s who've been the friendliest to the US on security as well as economic issues. What Trump has done, and I can't imagine this was deliberate, is to actually really undermine the Tory party's fortunes because you cannot run in Canada as a pro-Trump personality. It's just not politically possible. Trump has put Poilievre in a position where Poilievre doesn't really have a choice but to hug close to the liberals on the basic question of Canadian national pride and independence.

We're not going to become a 51st state. He can't run as I love Trump because that's not something Canadian voters want to hear, and so he's off the front page. What's on the front page is Trump attacks Canada, and the liberals are delighted to run on that. The result is going to be you're not going to get the government you want if you're Donald Trump. You're going to get something very similar to Justin Trudeau. You're going to get Mark Carney, who's ideologically much the same and who will have run on... Possibly won the election on the platform of anti-Trump, anti-American. The irony again is Trump actually has a point on defense. He has a great point on defense. Canada really has been a free rider for over a decade, for decades really, but particularly under Justin Trudeau, it doesn't spend nearly enough-

What would need to happen for Canada to become a serious defense partner to the U.S.?

CD: Canada could provide value added militarily, not by constantly mouthing off on rules-based order, but by actually policing the Arctic more effectively. That is something you're only likely to get if the Tories win.

You say there is a new surge of nationalism in Canada, then why isn’t there newfound criticism of Canada’s poor levels of defense spending?

CD: What the liberals are going to argue, and this will be very popular, is we're protecting our sovereignty against the United States. That's how they're going to... The issue of Canadian sovereignty is certainly on the table, but politically it's emerging as it's so often has in Canadian history, the near enemy, which is the United States. Trump has played into it. There's just no getting around it. Of course I agree with you that Canada should step up on defense and in the Arctic I've written about it.

But the US there has to be some political awareness of how allies need to come to these conclusions. It isn't by embarrassing them or insulting them or humiliating them necessarily. This is not going to work. I know that Canadians are seen as international nice guys and very much like the US, but the truth is they will get scrappy. They will start to sound a little Australian, but it won't be in the way that we want. It'll be in the anti-American vein that has always been such a strong foundation of Canadian identity. That's why Canada was created was to not be the United States.

How should Canada change its approach to defense spending?

CD: What I think would be great, and again, I don't think this is going to happen under the Liberals, but I think it could happen under the Tories if they managed to win, is that you would really focus on the Arctic. You would drop the emphasis on... It really has been an emphasis for some time now in the Canadian military, by Trudeau's own orders, you would drop the emphasis on DEI, progressive priorities, climate, gender, multilateralism, peacekeeping, and you would just get serious about the Arctic. That could involve building a new base with access for US forces. Making sure that critical minerals and oil and gas are in the hands of Western powers rather than China and Russia. Keeping a closer eye on the airspace. Beefing up coordination over NORAD. Cooperating on missile defense. Building heavy icebreakers. The Russians have a lot of them, the United States doesn't.

Canada has a few icebreakers, but should have a lot more. That would be a very specific concrete way to demonstrate to President Trump, I think, that Canada's serious. Here's the number of icebreakers we're going to build, and this is going to be expensive, but we're going to do it. If you really wanted to take it up a notch, you could even work on under-ice submarine capabilities. Just they should really be spending a lot more on defense. They spend something like 1.3%. I would say at least 2%, because that was the number that they agreed to in 2014 when the world was less dangerous than it is today. Do that in a way that's urgent and timely and specific, and really beef up the presence in the Arctic to keep an eye on the Chinese and the Russians, and do it in cooperation with the United States.

What can Trump do now to fix things for the upcoming election?

CD: Telling Trump to stay quiet is a futile effort. But if he could just stop... If he could just wait until the election is over to repeat his 51st state demand. That's the thing that Canadian conservatives keep saying is just... Nobody expects him to drop the tariff threat. It was understood. He ran on it, he won on it. He's going to look for concessions, we get it. But at a minimum, dropping this language that just absolutely riles people up, the 51st state annexations' thing, that would be number one because the liberals just eat that stuff up. The second thing is on the substance, it would help to know what he wants. They don't know what he wants. The first threat that was made and Trudeau managed to bump off the imposition of tariffs for a month, and there was some low-hanging fruit, which was good.

They addressed some border security issues. There's a fentanyl czar now in Canada that's been appointed. But as far as what's next, what you often hear from Canadian officials is they literally just don't know what Trump wants. Even if they wanted to meet all his demands, they don't know what those demands are. There's a series of threats over baseline tariffs, and then additionally steel, aluminum, automobiles, timber. I think they've gotten the feeling that it's pointless to concede anymore because there's nothing they can do. In other words that he's just determined to impose this no matter what, so now they don't see any point in conceding.

What is the future of U.S.-Canadian elections?

CD: I will try to conclude by laying out the hopeful case. I think this is possible. I don't know if it's probable, but I really do think it's possible. I would start by saying I would not lay it all on Trump. There is a problem, which is Canada really is complacent. There is a Disneyland quality. We have our progressive utopia up north, and how dare the Americans ask us to spend more on defense? That's true. It's absolutely true. It would be great to see that shaken up and reformed.

If, if, if this turns out to be a shock therapy or chemotherapy or whatever you want to call it, where there's some pain for a short period of time and a lot of mutual resentment including hockey fights and the rest of it, but then we transition over the long term to something that makes more sense, that would be great. I do think it's possible. You can envision actually a stronger US-Canada relationship on all fronts, particularly whereby Canada steps up and protects the Arctic, which seems to be such a priority for the Trump administration, and I think rightly so. But that can't happen with the left in power in Canada. There's only a chance of it if you have a Canadian Tory government, which is why it has to be carefully handled on this side as well.

Read the full transcript here.

SHOWNOTES

Trump's Spat With Canada Escalates (Newsweek, February 26, 2025)

Trump’s Threats Against Canada Upend Conservative’s Playbook (The New York Times, February 17, 2025)

Trump Confirms He’s Serious About Wanting Canada As 51st State (Forbes, February 10, 2025)

Here are all the ways Canada is striking back against Trump's tariffs (CBC, February 2, 2025)

Report highlights ‘systemic underinvestment’ in Canada as productivity stalls (BNN Bloomberg, February 24, 2025)

Missions for Prosperity: Unlocking Canada's Potential (BCG, February 2025)

Canada’s Military Is Slowly Falling Apart Now (Andrew Latham, 19fortyfive, January 12, 2025)

'Worst in the world': Here are all the rankings in which Canada is now last (National Post, August 11, 2022)

Canada and the Trump Administration: Part III (Colin Dueck, AEIdeas, February 26, 2025)

Canada and the Trump Administration: Part II (Colin Dueck, AEIdeas, February 24, 2025)

Canada and the Trump Administration: Part I (Colin Dueck, AEIdeas, February 18, 2025)

True North: Canadian Politics, the Tory Alternative, and the United States (Colin Dueck, AEI, February 8, 2024)

The Spectator’s interview with President Trump: full transcript (Ben Domenech & President Trump, The Spectator, February 28, 2025)

Republicans' reactions to Trump's tariffs on Canada is a mix of solidarity, silence and uncertainty (Kelly Malone, The National Post, February 2, 2025)

Trump’s Tariffs Wars Are About to Cost a Very Important Republican (Malcolm Ferguson, The New Republic, January 31, 2025)

Sorry, Canada — We Don’t Want You (Rich Lowry, National Review, January 3, 2025)

“Without the inflated real estate market masking reality, 🇨🇦 economic downturn would be clear to everyone” (Shazigoalie, Instagram, December 8, 2024)

Opinion: In reality, Canadians have been suffering a nine-year recession (Jason Clemens, Grady Munro and Milagros Palacios, Financial Post, March 13, 2024)

Canada Is a Military Free-Rider In NATO (The Editorial Board, WSJ, July 12, 2023)