Trump making Canada a US state would be a recipe for poutine and disaster | Opinion
Be careful what you ask for. Canada's population is a couple million greater than California's, so it would become the heavyweight in the Electoral College. Funny!
Oh, Canada, we all know President-elect Donald Trump was joking when he told your prime minister that maybe your country should become our 51st state.
The exchange came during a dinner at the unofficial Florida White House, a surprise visit to Mar-a-Lago by Justin Trudeau during which the prime minister argued against the tariffs Trump has threatened to impose. The Canadian leader said Trump’s proposed 25% tariffs would “kill” Canada’s economy, according to Fox News, prompting Trump to say that Canada was ripping us off to the tune of $100 billion, and that maybe it would do better as a U.S. state.
Trump overstated. The United States buys three-quarters of Canada’s exports, including autos and auto parts, and had a trade deficit with Canada of $80 billion in 2022.
Canada also is the No. 1 importer of U.S. goods.
Trump later posted what appears to be an AI-generated image on Truth Social of him standing on a rocky ledge next to a Canadian flag, looking at a mountain resembling Switzerland’s Matterhorn.
What a card! Able to make light of international relations and trade policies that affect millions of pocketbooks and jobs!
Go north, young man
As a fellow joke-lover living north of Canada – wonderfully named Essex County, Ontario, to be precise – I thought it could be fun to play along. What might change, for better or worse, if this really happened?
First, be careful what you ask for. Canada’s population is a couple million greater than California's, so it would become THE heavyweight in the Electoral College. Funny!
For more suggestions, I turned to a couple of Canada experts – my massage therapist in Windsor (soon to be officially renamed South Detroit) and Free Press reporter Kristen Jordan Shamus, the daughter of an immigrant from Quebec whose relatives still live there.
At a personal level, I’m happy I'd no longer need to tell border guards where I’m going, how long I’ll be there, where I live and what I bought. I’d miss the hilarious question of whether I have more than $10,000 with me, though.
What would Canada as the 51st state look like? Poutine and Timmy's everywhere.
What else can we expect?
- Canadians could stop complaining about their health care system, and start going broke with ours. Bonus: All those pharmaceutical ads they’ve been missing.
- American McDonald’s restaurants could start serving poutine, already offered in Canada, including spicy Buffalo chicken flavor!
- New national debates: Timmy’s or Dunkin’? Maple syrup, or high fructose corn syrup?
- All the agents at our northern border could be reassigned to the southern border, at least until the mighty wall is complete. Then they could be laid off by Elon Musk’s DOGE. (That's the newly created "Department of Government Efficiency," in case you haven't kept up.)
- What happens to Thanksgiving? Canadian Thanksgiving is the second Monday in October. We celebrate on the fourth Thursday in November. Perhaps the compromise is Hallow-giving. Thanks-o-ween?
- Thanksgiving dinner arguments could focus on whether to convert to the metric system, or adopt gun control measures, given Canada’s new clout in Congress, exceeding the size of every existing state's delegation.
- By the way, standard Canadian parental leave – with a stipend – is 52 weeks. (Sorry – I promised fun and that’s not a joke.)
- Canadians wouldn’t know what to do with all the extra money from lower U.S. tax rates – other than paying their own medical bills.
- Perhaps those surplus funds could go toward winter escapes to the sunny southern USA, currently limited to six months without a visa for Canadian snowbirds.
- At the same time, Americans might love having access to northern Canada, because with climate change, the Northwest Territories could become the new Florida.
- Our money might become a lot more fun. We could adopt loonies, toonies and colourful bills – replacing the king with the president, of course – something we suspect Trump would support.
- The risk of more “u” in our spelling. "Flavour." "Neighbour." "Colour." Ugh.
- There’s the issue of Quebec, which doesn’t even want to be part of Canada. Sort of like Texas if a Democrat is the president, with a similar language barrier.
- If, to appease Quebec, we add French street signs, Detroit’s got a head start with Cadieux, Beaubien, Livernois and Chene. Bonus: Some new Americans could pronounce these correctly.
- Here’s one possibility for building national unity: Canadian beer tends to be stronger than American beer, though the difference isn’t as great as Canadians apparently think.
- Finally, famously polite Canadians will need to learn that being American means never having to say “sorry.”
Randy Essex is an editor at the Free Press, where this column originally appeared.