Donald Trump twice referred to annexing Canada into the United States during a half-hour press conference from the White House yesterday, with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney sitting right there next to him.
In the face of continuing allusions to the merger of our countries, Canada cannot see this as a simple matter of trade talks. If annexation hangs over the background, every aspect of what we do as a country has to be about protecting and asserting our sovereignty.
It is not a question of what tariffs are appropriate or what trade agreement we can come to, although reaching an agreement is a useful distraction. It is about figuring out how we can protect ourselves when the United States decides that having our resources is more important than having our friendship.
The Supreme Court of the United States gave the president nearly limitless power in last year’s ruling granting immunity for “official acts.” In the past few weeks, we know that the United States has attacked several boats off the coast of Venezuela and extra-judicially killed their occupants, now believed to number at least 21 people.
Under the Supreme Court ruling, even if these brazen acts are deemed to be in violation of international law, the United States would consider the President to be acting within his official powers as President, and therefore face no real-world legal consequences, even if impeached.
That all would be an American internal issue if they were only using their powers to attack and kill people inside their borders.
Last week, federal agents assaulted an apartment building in Chicago detaining every one of their residents, in their hunt for people to deport to meet their deportation quotas.
It will be up to Americans how to handle their government’s militarisation of their cities, violent attacks on their people, and raids on foreign businesses investing in domestic industrial capacity. Not that judges who rule against the administration are safe.
But the Venezuela boat attack precedent is a warning to Canada. It is another incremental step in Trump’s disregard for both domestic and international law, and a demonstration of his reckless disregard for human life.
If he can attack and kill people in international waters without provocation or evidence, what is stopping him from needling Canada to get his way? As with his gradual implementation of federal agents and troops in Democrat territories and cowing of nearly every Republican lawmaker in the country to his wishes, a takeover of Canada would be gradual, incremental, barely noticeable at first.
Like his domestic strategy, it will be about shifting the Overton window until it seems perfectly rational.
It would be through the discrediting of Canadians’ desire to protect or our own interests. It would be through supporting of Canadian leaders like Alberta’s Danielle Smith in undermining Canada; leaders who would rather be vassals to Donald Trump than loyal to Canada’s domestic interests. It would be through being forced to purchase inferior versions of American military hardware. It would be through increasingly strongly suggesting annexation in order to solve our trade irritants.
Military action would not be necessary if he can secure a friendly government. But if he decides that the US needs fresh water, oil, metals, or any other Canadian resource — including living space — badly enough, it will not be out of the question.
For over a century, the United States has not seriously revisited the question of annexing Canada. Giving our far more progressive leaning population, a vote in American elections has long dissuaded American right-wing leaders from thinking of it. But with a President set to end any pretence of fair elections in the United States, this is no longer a factor.
When we look at the 1930s German example of what is happening, we generally only remember the end of that period. On their timeline, the Americans are already well into concentration camps and mass deportation based on race, but we are still years from the first occupations in 1938 of neighbouring lands.
Trump keeps bringing it up because annexing Canada is on his mind. Even he does not know how far he will take his country as his absolute power and imperial ambition continue to expand.
But history tells us what we can expect, and that gives us the only advantage we have.
I'm not worried about annexation. That's tRump being an idiot, as usual. I'm trying to focus on the positives, as few as they are. The latest meeting of Premiers with Governors is a good example, as well as everyday citizens bringing down ABC with their combined wallets. Sadly, money made ABC cave and bring back Kimmel, not morals...