Taking one for the team?

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Assuming that Trump succeeds with his desire to annex Canada, would it really be merged into the US as a single new state, number 51? In simple geographic terms, Canada covers a greater area (9.99 square kilometres) than the whole of the US (9.15 square kilometres), and a single state covering a greater area than the other 50 looks unbalanced, to say the least. In population terms, it’s true that the total population of Canada (about 37 million) is less that the population of California (about 39.5 million). But it’s also true that eight of Canada’s ten provinces each have a population greater than the smallest US state, and one of them, Ontario, has a population which would make it the fifth largest US state. The other two, along with the three ‘territories’, have lower populations than even the smallest US state, but the constitution, as far as I’m aware, sets neither a minimum or a maximum.

The difference between joining as one state or as a number of new states is important, electorally. Canada as a single additional state would only add 2 members to the Senate, although even that might make a difference given the closeness of Senate elections in recent years. However, adding between 8 and 13 new states would add 16 to 26 new members; potentially making a huge difference to political outcomes in an enlarged US. We don’t know, of course, how Canadians would vote; politics in Canada is much more complex than the overtly two-party system in the US. However, given the generally more liberal attitudes amongst Canadians, it’s not wholly unreasonable to speculate that they might break decisively in favour of the Democrats rather than the Republicans. It would probably be enough to keep the Republicans out of power for the foreseeable future. I guess that might explain why everything Trump says refers to Canada as a single additional state: even if two extra Democrats made Senate control harder to achieve for the Republicans, it doesn’t look as impossible as adding as many as 26.

If Canadians were given a choice about merging with the US (and we cannot, of course, simply assume that Trump would allow that), it’s hard to see them – and this is especially true of Quebeckers – agreeing to do so as one state rather than as several. For Trump, it looks like a double-edged sword – expand the territory at the cost of a loss of political control. It’s almost tempting to suggest that the rest of the world should ask Canadians to take one for the team in order to prevent any recurrence of the current madness. The only problem is that I’m not entirely convinced that the same thing couldn’t happen under the Democrats. The differences between the two are smaller than many think. Trump, after all, could have decided to stand as a Democrat rather than a Republican: in a political system largely devoid of ideological differences and based almost entirely around individuals, party labels aren’t particularly meaningful. Assuming that the problem is only one for Republicans is a big mistake.