I support President Donald Trump’s desire to make Canada our 51st state, but not for his reasons. Trump wants the United States to take over Canada. I want Canada to take over the United States.
Let’s compare Canada to our current largest state, California. Canada’s estimated 2024 population was 41.5 million. California’s was 39.4 million. That would make Canada our largest state.
You might argue that we should take each of Canada’s 10 provinces as a state rather than the whole country, but that would cause problems because they also have territories, and their least populous province is a lot smaller than our least populous state. But Trump wants one big state, so let’s go with that. That means we add two new senators and about 55 new representatives (compared to California’s 52).
Some people claim that if Canada actually became a state, it is liberal enough that Republicans wouldn’t win another presidential election for a hundred years. That’s too simplistic, and I have something else in mind anyway.
I don’t want Democrats or Republicans to win another election — ever. Many Americans agree with me that one party is bad and the other is terrible. We’re almost even in which one we think is which. As I put in a column after the election, one of our bad parties “is made up of suicidal fools and the other of corrupt sycophants.”
Well, if Canada comes in as a state, our party problems would be over. We would just adopt their three major parties and ignore their minor parties as we ignore our own. Keep in mind that, in their terminology, liberal, conservative and democrat don’t mean what they do here.
Their New Democratic Party is left of center — think Bernie Sanders. Their Liberal Party is center left — think most Democrats, except they’re able to pick competent leaders. Their Conservative Party is center right like our moderate Republicans — all three of them. They don’t have a MAGA-comparable faction.
The Liberals just dumped party leader Justin Trudeau and elected Mark Carney as temporary prime minister. The Conservatives are led by Pierre Poilievre and the New Democrats by Jagmeet Singh.
We don’t know much about these leaders or their parties, but we’ll be able to get a good look in their upcoming election, which is due to be called “soon.” Their elections are called when they need them, not on a schedule, and they may have a quick election rather than going on for two years until everyone’s sick of the candidates. That’s another thing we could copy.
Of course, Canada has a parliamentary system that’s very different from our presidential system.
Maybe we should dump our failing system and copy theirs. We could become their 11th province rather than them becoming our 51st state. Well, maybe, but that’s a different column. There’s nothing unfixable about our Constitution; it’s just the government that doesn’t work. We’re locked in a doom loop that Canadians don’t understand.
A Canadian attitude might be: “If the government doesn’t work, why don’t they just fix it?” And fixing wouldn’t mean opening the hood and asking a foreign mechanic to remove a quarter of the parts at random.
Personally, I don’t think we’re going to fix the government without replacing the parties. In our next election I want to hear this slogan: “No Republican, No Democrats.” Or maybe “No Democrats, No Republican,” depending on which you think is worse. I hope the candidates for president will be Carney of the Liberal Party, Poilievre of the Conservative Party and Singh of the New Democratic Party.
I’m skipping over a few minor problems. Does that mean we have to switch to metric measurement like the rest of the world? What about those crazy French speakers in Quebec? Will we have to give up our dysfunctional medical system and improve our health statistics to the level of the rest of the developing world?
I can imagine readers chuckling and saying, “He’s just using satire to make some sharp points.” And maybe I am. But I still advise you to keep an eye on the Canadian elections, parties and candidates. I predict that by March 2028 my ideas won’t sound so crazy.
We might be ready for real change if the stock market crashes, inflation runs wild, we deliberately lose the war in Ukraine, China takes over Taiwan and our only friend the world is Israel. Would you rather vacation at the Trump resort in Greenland or the one in Gaza?
In fact, by 2028, we may be asking about a 52nd state. Would Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum be a better candidate than any American we can think of?
