So My Country's Getting Annexed, Eh?

Musings from a potential 51st state

I was in the midst of writing an article on Trump this week. The subject was USAID, and Trump’s terrifying comments about taking over Gaza, and the creepiness of Netanyahu giving a homicidal pager to his creepy homicidal friend. But then I had to amend it, because it concerns my own country. I read this article in CBC that our lame duck Prime Minister Trudeau, who recently resigned in disgrace, told business leaders at a Canada-U.S. Economic Summit that Trump’s repeated threats to annex Canada might actually be real.

Photo by Suvin Vengilat on Unsplash

Canada is kind of a weird country in a lot of ways. We are the second biggest country in the world, and yet our government is incapable of building enough affordable housing on the land for their people. Our health care is free, but the healthcare system is overloaded and no one has a doctor, and we still have to pay for dental care and eyeglasses and counselling because neither the teeth nor the eyes nor the brain is a part of the human body. We make everyone put Indigenous land acknowledgments in our email signatures, but no one actually does anything for Indigenous people, or supports them in any way that would be practical.

In Canada, or at least in the liberal bubble of Vancouver where I live, we also have a lot of political conversations that feel like they are stuck in 2016. While modern politics has transformed significantly online, conversations on the subject of Trump have not been able to transform appropriately in the real world. There is some kind of unwillingness here to recognize and acknowledge that it is no longer the 2010s, whereby rolling our eyes at Trump or underestimating his threats is not actually that helpful when it comes to dealing with him.

So when Trump first made his threats to annex my country, I was immediately wary in a way that I don’t think a lot of other people in my community were. I did not, like others did, think this was just bluster. Sure, it’s true that Trump is just going to say whatever the fuck he wants to say, and there is not always a reason for it. But the remarks about Canada appear purposeful, whether or not he actually wants to take us over. He has now threatened us many times with annexation in a way that appears quite deliberate: during a meeting at Mar-a-Lago in December 2024, on December 18^th 2024 on Truth Social, on January 7^th in a press conference, and also on January 24^th in a press conference in North Carolina.

Photo by Jason Hafso on Unsplash

When I have asked other Canadians what they think about this threat, I have noticed a few different reactions. The first is the one I mentioned above, where the assumption is that Trump is just blustering, and we should not take seriously the things he says. The second is to scoff and say this should never happen, and that it’s offensive that he’s saying it. But people are reluctant to discuss why it couldn’t happen.

Trudeau has stated that “there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell” that we would want to be annexed. Similarly, Conservative Party leader Pierre Pollievre—who will most likely be our next Prime Minister—has stated that it will “never” happen.

But no one has actually said why it couldn’t happen and exactly what we intend to do if Trump is serious and tries. Obviously, we all agree that we don’t want it to happen. A major central component of the Canadian identity is unfortunately just “not being American,” so I understand why the mere thought of it is putting us into an identity crisis tailspin. Yes, it shouldn’t happen.

But what exactly are we intending on doing if things are as they shouldn’t be?

This is the question I find myself asking again and again in the 2020s. I have tried to talk to some people about the Mossad thing only to be told I shouldn’t be focusing on this, and should instead be organizing a wedding or talking about the Grammys or pretending everything is as it was. Similarly, I have talked to some people about the annexation thing, but the vibe I am getting from the community is that I shouldn’t be alarmist and paranoid and should instead be “patriotically” denying the fact that if America really wanted to take us over, they could probably just take us over.

I am actually not trying to be negative or unpatriotic when I say this. In no way do I want this to happen. I’ve even lived briefly in America and returned, and I consider myself more patriotic that I am willing to voice concern for Canada’s future. Though I always hate the government, Canadian people are generally good people, and I do care about what will happen to us.

What exactly does this government intend on doing if Trump is serious and actually does want to annex us? If Americans come in with their guns and their bombs and their massive military, what exactly are we supposed to do about it? Who’s going to fight them? Me and my fellow Millennials busy playing Stardew Valley? Are we going to fight them off with hockey sticks and tell them they shouldn’t be invading us because it’s not polite and we don’t want them to? I just genuinely want to know what our plan is to prevent this.

My belief is that Trump is threatening us because we’re in a weakened state, and when you’re in a weakened state, other countries do what they want to you. Whether or not Trump actually wants to annex us, I feel it’s some way of reminding us he has power over us. In Canada, we are not actually in a very good position. We have a lame duck Prime Minister that everyone hates, and Pollievre, who will probably be our next Prime Minister, is a smug patronizing Zionist that should not expect an easy time from Canadians when he gets in.

Is anyone aware how much Canadian politicians get harassed on the street in the 2020s? There are a lot of Canadians that are pretty mad about a lot of different things, and politicians are getting yelled at and harassed on the street like I’ve never seen before.

Photo by Casey Allen on Unsplash

When I was growing up, I was taught a famous quote by our former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who was Justin Trudeau’s father. Pierre said that living next to America was like living next to a sleeping elephant. It does not matter that you are not the elephant. If you are living beside her, and she turns in her sleep, you move when she moves.

I am not trying to be alarmist, and in many ways, I resent that voicing concern and voicing well-founded negativity is so often torn apart where I live. There appears to be this desperate need to believe that although America is falling apart, our country has somehow escaped this. But this is not exactly the truth.

You cannot hide this kind of thing from a social worker. Have you ever called a suicide support group for a patient who has lost a family member to suicide, and have been told that unfortunately they would not recommend getting on their waiting list, because the list is just too long? Have you ever tried to support an elderly patient, dying from two different chronic diseases, to try to find subsidized housing, knowing that he definitely won’t find anything because the waitlist is ten years long? Seeing how strained the system is makes you realize that social work, while important, is like trying to put a band-aid on a heavily bleeding wound. That’s what things look like in Canada. But I feel like when I talk about it, I’m always told I’m being too negative and need to chill out.

But when the elephant moves, we move. You can see it everywhere. After Trump defunded USAID, the website for our equivalent organization, Global Affairs Canada, crashed. Development Canada, Global Affairs Canada’s account intended for international development, reported this was because of “technical difficulties.” But since then, it is looking like they removed data regarding foreign aid spending. This is an incredibly bad look for transparency given what is going on in America. Why would they feel the need to remove this from public view?

On a related note, did you know that when you’re a social worker in Canada, and you’re supporting patients with leukemia who are unable to work because of their immunocompromised statuses—like they will literally die if they try to go outside and so rely on funds from the Canadian Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction—you may still at some point have to argue with the MSDPR because they don’t want to fork out even $200 for a cancer patient? So our tax dollars certainly aren’t funding much there. Where are they going instead?

I know that the conversation on both USAID and Global Affairs Canada involves nuance. They likely fund both positive and negative things across the world. But I’m assuming if they’ve wiped their data, there are in fact suspicious or negative things to be found there. Just like USAID, whose top contractor is Chemonics International Inc, which appears kinda sus. Why is Chemonics the “largest for-private recipient of US government foreign aid” for example when there are scandals like these?

So on that note, what’s happening with the Global Affairs Canada website? Where’s the money going there? The timing is remarkable.

When the elephant moves, we move.

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Articles and writers I’ve been reading:

• The Lubavitch Chabad Admit to Illegal Fundraising for Israel in the UK by Karl

• How NATO Provoked Russia by Glenn Diesen

• Palantir: the world's most evil company by Political Economist

• Army was ordered to kill Israelis on 7 October, defense minister confirms by Asa Winstanley

• The Ukraine War Suddenly Falling Out of the News Tells Us the Narrative Was Never Real by Michael Feldman

• Netanyahu Gives Trump 'Golden Pager' in Honor of Terror Attack on Lebanon by Trends Journal

• Russian SVR's Latest Intel: "West Preparing to Flush Zelensky" by Simplicius

• Civil Rights Are Being Destroyed Throughout The West In Service Of Israel by Caitlin Johnstone

• The best way to make young people love neoliberalism is to call them morons by Laura and Normal Island News

• The US has been supporting the Israeli terrorism in the Middle East since 1948 by Amr Rageh