Canada is having a moment at Mar-a-Lago, for better or worse.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had barely left U.S. president-elect Donald Trump's base in Florida, where he had gone in an effort to calm the waters with the incoming U.S. administration, than Trump posted on Truth Social that it had been a " ... pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada."
Trump, as always, can be hard to interpret: is this purely a joke, an expression of dominance (he is known for this) or a hint at something closer to an ambition?
Leaders in Washington have sometimes looked northward to expand their country, though not in any serious way since the aftermath of their Civil War, when then-Secretary of State William H. Seward called for the annexation of Canada, and the Fenians semi-officially probed our defences. Confederation was in large part a response to the military threat posed at that time by the United States.
Is it time to reach down the musket from over the fireplace, dust off the drum, and summon the ghost of Laura Secord?
That would seem premature for now (perhaps).
In a poll this week, 86 per cent of readers rejected the idea of union with the United States.
(An aside: this possibility has sometimes been described as our becoming the '51st state,' a concept I'll deal with further down in the story.)
Men are more open to the idea than women:
Older readers are more sternly opposed:
Higher-income readers are somewhat more open to the idea:
There is a very sharp divide by federal voting intention, with PPC voters most in favour of becoming Americans:
There is a close correlation to attitudes to U.S. politics, as well:
There is also a strong correlation with views on the monarchy. Allowing for differences in historic periods, this is a correlation of views that goes back to the founding of Upper Canada:
And also a sense of national identity:
And to views on Ukraine:
Dog people are more in favour of annexation:
So, about this 51st state business: Canada, as a state, would be the second-largest by population, and by far the largest by land mass.
As we can see below, though, nearly all provinces, as states, would have fairly mainstream populations for states, starting with Ontario, which would be in the #5 slot of states by population.
The (predictable) exception, as you can see if you scroll way to the bottom, is PEI. A merger of New Brunswick and PEI would produce a state of 1.1 million, somewhere between Montana and Rhode Island in the population chart.
