News travels slowly to this corner of the forest, especially in winter. It has just come to the attention of this dual citizen that President Trump, in a meeting with Blackie McBlackface, Emperor of Canuckistan, that the latter's country would be better off joining the Excited States of America as the 51st state. Why, he said to Junior, you could even be the first governor. Or if not you, then Wayne Gretsky.
Chief Walking Goose allowed as how the frostbacks he rules might not want to join a country where everyone has a gun for self-defence, but not everyone has health insurance coverage provided by the government. But, said the Donald, if you don't join us voluntarily, we have ways of making you see reason (read: the way I see things).
Did he mean another invasion? As President James Madison said way back in 1812, "it would only be a matter of marching." Even President Trump, who ignores history that he doesn't like, knows how that turned out. So he assured M Trudeau and his minions that he wasn't talking about an armed invasion. Goodness, no! A 25% tariff on all Canadian goods and services would do just as well, or even better.
Since he said that, Canadians of all political stripes have had their knickers* in a twist over how to respond to the threatened tariffs. Some argue for a tit-for-tat tariff. [DJT sez: "OK then. Tat!"] Others say maybe joining the US of A isn't such a bad idea. It would cure their government's terminal wokeness once and for all, without an election, let alone an assassination.
What they are forgetting is that Canada and the US of A have been arguing about, threatening, negotiating and renegotiating tariffs since before Canada was even a country. In fact, it was the threat of American tariffs against Canada that forced the assorted provinces to unite as one country (more or less), beginning in 1867. What follows is adapted from Stone Country, by George Bowering, Canada's first poet laureate, Penguin Canada 2003.
The US war with the Confederate States of America complicated Canadian politics greatly. A lot of Canadians joined the Blue Coats to fight against the slave economy. But the British, still smarting from bad experiences with their former colonies, built warships that wound up in Grey Coat hands.
These ships made a great nuisance of themselves in the Union shipping lanes, and when the war was all but over, President Lincoln started talking about reprisals, especially the receiving-huge-acreage kind of reprisals. Luckily this sort of talk tapered off after Lincoln's assassination, and the work was left to the feckless Fenians.
In 1871, the case was closed when Britain agreed that it should pay some monetary compensations.
But the big new republic was a place in which business and the military were learning to butter each other's buttocks. If military annexation was not going to look all that good, there were always economic means.
In 1854 the US and British North America had signed a Reciprocity Treaty, which had proven quite handy for the businessmen on both sides, and during their big war, the US had been happy to get fish, food, minerals and wood without paying tariffs on them.
But when the war was over, the US Senate began to listen to the complains of businessmen whose business was fish, coal and lumber.
Listen, said these businessmen, we need protection from these foreign traders. Don't you remember that we just recently fought a couple of wars with them? Don't you realize that if we put up tariffs they will eventually beg for annexation so they can make a living?
The US withdrew from the Reciprocity Treaty in 1866, whereupon some economic realists proposed the idea of a confederation of the several provinces. Said Sir John Eh Macdonald, who would become the first prime minister, "I'll drink to that!", and so the Dominion of Canada was born.
This was the kind of thing that made Canadian schoolchildren decide that history was kind of boring. US schoolchildren, of course, never heard abut it. But over the years there have been a lot of apoplectic fits, suicides and desertions caused by the tariffs that keep showing up at the US border.
The lesson for DJT, should he deign to pay attention, is that Canadians will find a way to keep the World's Longest Undefended Border (TM) intact and still do business with the new imperial America. Most of them -- let's say 50% + 1 -- reject the idea of joining the Excited States of America, even if staying out costs them a bit more. As those arch-Canucks, Bob & Doug McKenzie, would put it:
* Note from Ed. to American readers: "Knickers" is what the Brits call ladies' underpants. Canadians call them "panties", like Americans do.
