Canada’s new leader, Mark Carney, rebuked the Trump administration’s vision to make his country the 51st U.S. state.
During some of his first public remarks as Canada’s prime minister, Carney made it a point on Friday to knock President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for their comments regarding his country.
“I’ve been clear. The ministers behind me, I think, to an individual, when asked, have been clear,” Carney said in Ottawa shortly after he was sworn into office as prime minister. “We will never, ever, in any way, shape, or form, be part of the United States.”
“It’s crazy. It’s very simple. That’s all you can say,” he added when pressed about the Trump administration’s statements on acquiring the United States’s northern neighbor. “America is not Canada.”
Trump has long raised the possibility of annexing Canada in comments that have always met firm rebuff from the country. However, former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in January he believed the comments were meant to be more of a “distraction” from Trump’s tariff agenda than a genuine threat.
“Canadians are incredibly proud of being Canadian. One of the ways we define ourselves most easily is, well, we’re not American,” Trudeau said. “There is such a depth of pride that that’s not actually an issue. What I think is happening in this is President Trump, who’s a very skillful negotiator, is getting people to be somewhat distracted by that conversation, to take away from the conversation” about tariffs.
MARK CARNEY TAKES OFFICE AS CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER
The conversation around annexing Canada has typically revolved around Trump’s threats or actions to place tariffs on the U.S.’s northern neighbor.
“The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State. This would make all Tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear,” Trump wrote earlier this week in a post to Truth Social. “Canadians taxes will be very substantially reduced, they will be more secure, militarily and otherwise, than ever before, there would no longer be a Northern Border problem, and the greatest and most powerful nation in the World will be bigger, better and stronger than ever — And Canada will be a big part of that.”
