President-elect Donald Trump’s repeated assertions that he wants Canada to join the United States have become a staple of his presidential transition. But the sentiment — like Trump’s breezy confidence about its ease and popularity — is far from new.
Such talk has sprung up practically throughout the whole of American history, often buttressed by the idea that Canadians were clamoring for it, too.
Amid the War of 1812, President Thomas Jefferson told Philadelphia newspaper editor Thomas Duane that “the acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching.” (Spoiler alert: It wasn’t.) Among other things, the National Park Service notes in an article about the comment, many in the United States wrongly “assumed that the Canadian population would welcome the arrival of American forces.”
Later in the 1800s, a degree of pro-annexation sentiment developed within each of the major U.S. political parties, according to historian John W. Quist, united by a common thread that annexation of Canada “would occur peacefully and be welcomed by Canadians.”
And now there’s Trump, posting on social media that “many people in Canada LOVE being the 51st State.”
On Tuesday, he continued the drumbeat at a news conference, telling reporters he could use “economic force” to acquire Canada. “That would really be something,” he continued, adding: “You get rid of that artificially drawn line, and you take a look at what that looks like. And it would also be much better for national security.”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said afterward on X: "There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States."
Public opinion polling of Canada illustrates a distinct political culture that’s far different from the United States’.
A September poll from the Environics Institute showed Canadians preferring Vice President Kamala Harris to Trump by a 3-to-1 ratio before the election, though Trump fared better than he did against Joe Biden in the same measure four years ago, especially among younger Canadians. (The poll did show a plurality of Canadian Conservatives preferring him this time, which was not the case in 2020.)
Canadians generally have had favorable opinions about the United States over the last quarter-century, according to Pew Research Center surveys — but they were never lower than when Trump was president, dipping to 35% favorable in 2020 before they rebounded after Biden’s election. The Environics Institute’s polling shows a similar trend.
Meanwhile, a handful of Canadian politicians and parties supporting annexation by the United States have sprung up over the years — but those movements have quickly evaporated without gaining much more than a whisper of public support.
And as Montreal Gazette columnist Allison Haines noted in 2018 in writing about one of those quixotic endeavors, the likes of Quebec “would be a very odd fit as the 51st state,” with approval for things like universal health care deeply embedded in Canadian political culture (though some polls have shown rising interest in reform in Canada) while they remain hot-button issues of debate in the United States.
It’s a reminder that the last time the idea of adding new states was in the public sphere, then-Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and others in the GOP were quick to warn about the potential political consequences of adding more Democratic senators. The Environics Institute poll, translated into hypothetical votes, would add millions of anti-Trump voters to the country.
In short, Trump’s rhetorical dreams of a no-brainer match are far more complicated in reality. But he is not alone in U.S. history in skating past those trivialities to talk of new frontiers in manifest destiny.
