Editorial: U.S. and Canada better neighbors than housemates

By The Herald Editorial Board

Since President Trump is reportedly being serious with his suggestion that Canada become “the 51st state,” perhaps we should take it seriously as well.

He confirmed during an interview before Sunday’s Super Bowl that this is a “real thing.” And Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — whom Trump already is referring to as “governor” — has used the same “real thing” language with his nation’s business leaders.

But, honestly, this is bluster, right? At most, a bargaining tactic, especially as Trump has deployed steep tariffs on steel and aluminum on all nations — Canada is a major supplier of both to the U.S. — and the threat of 25 percent tariffs against Canada and Mexico could return at the end of the month when a negotiated suspension expires.

Yet, there’s precedent for the nation’s territorial — and eventually, statehood — ambitions. Just ask California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and bits of Oklahoma, Kansas and Wyoming; all relinquished by Mexico to Texas in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago at the conclusion of the 1848 war between the U.S. and Mexico.

Or ask Hawaii, which sided with the U.S. and agreed to annexation when Britain and France were pressuring the island nation to sign territorial treaties with each in the late 19th century. Congress ratified a 1898 treaty negotiated by President William McKinley — who Trump just gave Alaska’s Denali back to — annexing Hawaii, though it took until 1957 for it to be awarded statehood.

Likewise for Alaska, and its purchase by the U.S. from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million, about $129 million in today’s dollars. It too, waited until 1957 for statehood. And don’t forget President Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase.

With war inadvisable and with no one to buy Canada from, that leaves a treaty as the best option, and one that is neither impossible nor unthinkable, says an associate professor of international development studies at Dalhouse University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. (Now might be a good time to start brushing up on those Canadian provinces and territories.)

Robert Huish, in an article for the university’s Dal News and for The Conversation, writes that the “constitutional architecture” exists to make it a reality.

“There is both potential and precedent for the U.S. to acquire territory through cession or subjugation,” Huish wrote.

Huish, not a fan of ceding Canada to the U.S., urges his fellow Canadians to make use of that constitutional architecture to oppose becoming a U.S. territory.

“Canadian politicians at federal, provincial and even municipal levels need to open lines of communication with Congress, especially in economically strategic states,” he writes. “Congressional representatives need to view annexing Canada as a ridiculous burden, both politically and financially, rather than as a prize.”

And there would be a burden for members of Congress and U.S. citizens in swallowing up Canada, regardless of whether that’s as a territory, a state or 10 or more states.

Adding the political representation of Canada to the United States invites a range of complexity and trade-offs, not just for current Canadians, but for Americans, as well.

As a territory, Canada would add its 41.6 million residents to the United State’s population of 341.3 million. But, unless granted statehood, those living in the Canadian territory — like the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico — would be U.S. citizens and would likely keep their provincial governments, but they would have no representation in the U.S. Senate and only non-voting representation in the U.S. House.

Asking our northern neighbors to enjoy taxation without representation would likely go over as well as substituting American cheese for cheese curd in a plate of poutine.

Suppose we offer a rush job on statehood; is that one state — as Trump envisions —most or at least 10, for the existing 10 provinces, and some other arrangement for the country’s three northernmost territories?

Sticking with issues of representation, as one state, all 41 million Great State of Canada residents would share two U.S. senators. And, with the House of Representatives locked in at 435 members, each House member would be responsible for representing an average of 880,000 constituents, opposed to the current 783,000.

Canada would best California as the largest state in terms of population, 41 million to 39 million.

Canada would also be the largest state in terms of land mass — 3.9 million square miles, dwarfing Alaska’s 665,000 square miles and dropping Texas to a distant third — and second largest economy with $2.14 trillion in annual gross domestic product; with California leading with $4.1 trillion in annual GDP.

While most Americans’ cultural understanding of Canada is generally limited to notions of Molson Canadian beer, professional hockey and Tim Hortons Donuts, our neighbors to the north are culturally and politically diverse. The most common ancestries are English, Scottish, French, Irish, German, Chinese, Italian, First Nations (Canada’s term for Indigenous persons), Indian, Ukrainian, Dutch and Polish; and nearly 22 percent of the current population are immigrants.

The country, eschewing the U.S. two-party system, has three major parties and two smaller parties in Parliament, among them the Parti Québécois, which for decades has led ambitions for that province to cede from Canada. Parti Québécois also has been protective of Canada’s bilingual tradition, making French a national language, equal to English, and requiring government employees to have knowledge of both and requiring the ability to speak both of select positions.

How’s your French, Mr. President?

Expect our politics to become even more raucous in a combined nation.

“Canadian provinces are fiercely independent and protective of their powers in a way that would make even the most fervent ‘state rights’ advocates in the United States blush,” writes Grant Wyeth in The Interpreter, an online publication of the Lowry Institute, a nonpartisan international policy think tank in Sydney, Australia.

Adding 10 or more states to the union, would — unless the makeup of Congress is changed — require a reapportionment of Congressional members; adding at least 20 more senators, but dividing the 435 House members among those 10 new states, meaning a loss of representatives throughout the existing 50 states, and a loss of regional clout and Electoral College heft for each state.

And all bets are off for what changes Canada’s five-party system would force for Democrats and Republicans; but perhaps that’s on the plus side of the consideration.

We doubt that Trump has given much thought to any of these complexities, much less whether we’d be spelling color and flavor with a “u.”

The Peace Arch, which marks the U.S.-Canadian border at the crossing in Blaine — the longest undefended border in the world — bears these words: “Children of a common mother.” The arch celebrates a long and fruitful friendship between the two siblings, but it’s one that doesn’t require us to live in the same house.

Whether Trump is serious or not about Canada — and Gaza, Greenland and Panama, while he’s at it — Canadians and Americans can seriously and politely say, “Non.”