Trump blows up the notion his Canada talk was just a fleeting fancy

There’s been no shortage of speculation about how U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments about Canada might impact the federal election.

It’s now time to start asking a new, longer-term question: About how his attitude will impact Canada beyond Monday’s election.

It now seems increasingly obvious that Trump’s expansionist aspirations are no fleeting fancy. He kept quiet for a while, leading some to wonder whether he’d gotten it out of his system — that maybe he was just simply trolling our former prime minister, Justin Trudeau.

But in recent days, the president has been blunt in different encounters with media that he seriously would love to see Canada become a state. 

Lest anyone think he might be joking, he made clear he wasn’t. Time magazine asked him in an interview: Maybe you’re trolling a bit when talking about Canada as 51st state.

“Actually, no, I’m not,” he told Time in an interview conducted Tuesday, and published Friday.

“I’m really not trolling. Canada is an interesting case.…  I say the only way this thing really works is for Canada to become a state.”

He repeated his oft-stated claim about the U.S. subsidizing Canada, restating figures that appear to take the trade deficit, add Canada’s under-spending on defence and wildly exaggerate that total sum.

Asked if he wanted to grow the American empire, as part of his talk about Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal, Trump replied, “If we had the right opportunity. Yeah.” 

Asked again if he wanted to be remembered as a president who expanded American territory, he replied, “Wouldn’t mind.”

At this point, it’s no longer tenable to assume the president is just joking, says one of the best-connected Canadians in Washington. After all, Trump even put his desire for territorial expansion in his inaugural address. 

“Nobody says something repeatedly for months of this nature without believing it,” said Eric Miller, an international trade consultant in Washington and adviser on Canada-U.S. relations.

He said Trump believes two things: that the U.S. doesn’t need Canada under their current economic arrangement, and that he wishes he could acquire it.

How, when, under what conditions and how determined he is to put the effort into making this happen — all of that’s unclear, Miller said.

“I don’t think there’s a master plan right now which says, ‘Three months from now we will do X, and six months from now we will do Y,'” Miller said. 

“But the desire is clearly there.… Certainly this is going to be a top priority for the next prime minister.

“It will be an issue that the next government in Canada will constantly have to monitor. And they will have to assess what President Trump’s intentions are over time, because his interest and his intentions may evolve over time.”

The challenge for Canada’s next government

There will be early points of contact between the next government and Trump. For starters, there’s the G7 summit in Alberta in June. The countries are also set to enter comprehensive trade and security negotiations.

For a while, it seemed plausible that these events might unfold without Trump disparaging, and calling into question, Canada’s sovereignty.

After all, he’d stopped talking about Canada as the 51st state for a few weeks, since Mark Carney replaced Trudeau as prime minister and Liberal leader last month.

After their first phone call, Carney said Trump had respected Canada’s sovereignty in that conversation. But it turns out there was more to the story.

The first indication this was merely a temporary pause in his rhetoric came in a comment from the White House press secretary: Karoline Leavitt told a CBC reporter that Trump still believed in making Canada a state.

Then he said it again to other reporters in the Oval Office. Then again to Time Magazine, when asked about it, insisting he wasn’t joking.

And this week Radio-Canada reported that — Carney’s public statement notwithstanding — Trump indeed mentioned wanting to make Canada the 51st state in their call last month.

When asked on the campaign trail about the discrepancy, Carney insists he wasn’t lying about his previous statement that Trump had respected Canada’s sovereignty; the Liberal leader said they’d had the conversation as two sovereign nations.

Still, in response to questions Friday about the Time interview, Carney acknowledged that something has changed between the countries.

“The president’s latest comments are more proof, as if we needed any, that the old relationship with the United States that we’ve had is over,” the Liberal leader told reporters in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., using a line he first said last month.

“And it’s proof, it’s a reminder, it’s a call to action that we need to chart a new path. That’s the new reality.”

Awkward G7 incoming

What’s yet to be determined is whether managing Trump’s aspirations will be Carney’s challenge, after Monday’s election — or Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s.

But they’ll be busy soon thereafter, preparing for a highly unusual G7. On Canadian soil, with Trump as their guest.

Miller’s advice? In public comments, welcome Trump to Canada. Don’t publicly back him into a corner. In private, spell out clear consequences for threats to Canada’s sovereignty.

Meanwhile, work with the other G7 countries. Miller proposes a group statement reaffirming the principle of national sovereignty. Then release that statement, with or without the signature of the United States.