by Barry Weisleder, published on Socialist Action, January 31, 2025
The Canadian ruling elite is imperialist in its own right, commanding some of the biggest corporations in the world, particularly prominent in the fields of banking, mining, energy resources, forestry, retail and manufacturing. Unsurprisingly, American Capital covets that wealth as Washington’s share of global production and its military heft declines relative to other powers. That reality is the background to threats issued by U.S. President Donald Trump to “annex by force” Greenland and the Panama Canal, and to absorb by “economic pressure” the Canadian state and its riches.
A major menace is the 25 per cent tariff that Trump threatens to impose on all imports from Canada to the USA. He proposes to enact similar tariffs on goods from Mexico, and to further increase such taxes on trade with China and other countries which do not accede to his often unspecified demands. However, curbing ‘illegal’ migration and the passage of illicit drugs at border points are often mentioned, along with demands that Ottawa spend more on its military and its charter membership in NATO. If Canada were to become “the 51st State” it would enjoy lower taxes, total security and unparalleled prosperity – so says Trump. Clearly, to regard that as even a faint possibility, one would have to overlook America’s collapsing public health care, education and transportation systems, its growing social inequality, its surging house-less population, its looming climate crisis, and its forever wars, including its complicity with genocide. (Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?)
Between giant corporations, north and south of the long border, there is intensifying inter-imperialist rivalry, with one rival dwarfing the other. As the capitalist rulers sharpen their knives, at the risk of fomenting greater global instability and prompting a deep depression (remember the toxin of protectionism in the 1930s), Ottawa and the mainstream politicians promote a Team-Canada approach. But as every worker knows, there are two Canadas – one for the rich, another for everyone else.
A trade war hurts workers on all sides. Protectionism is the enemy of the impoverished and powerless. Team Canada is camouflage for social robbery. The alternative is Team Working Class, whose goal should be public ownership, money for jobs and justice, not for warfare and NATO. Follow the lead of Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum who told Trump to stop sending weapons, and stop condoning the operations of drug lords into her country.
The Canadian Labour Congress and its affiliated New Democratic Party should be actively building an alliance with unions and popular movements in the USA and Mexico to resist trade war protectionism.
Appeals to Canadian nationalism are poisonous, not unlike Trump’s MAGA propaganda. The foundation for social progress is internationalism, not the so-called self-determination of (colonial-setter) oppressor states.
Stand up for popular sovereignty — which excludes annexation on the terms of the ruling rich. U.S. Hands Off Panama and Greenland. End the Embargo of Cuba and Venezuela.
Will there be, some day, broad cooperation and unity across the western hemisphere? Yes. But how?
Recall the victory of the Russian Revolution in 1917. It launched the socialist re-construction of society under a revolutionary workers’ government. Most of the nations imprisoned by the Czarist Empire chose to join the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which made great social and economic progress before succumbing to the bureaucratic nightmare of Stalinism.
America will be a magnet for workers’ unity when it takes the path of socialist revolution. Today the situation is very far from the prospect of a Red North America. The rate of union representation in the USA was 11.2 per cent in 2023, compared to 20 per cent in 1983. In the Canadian state, union density was 29 per cent in 2023, compared to 37.6 per cent in 1984. The figures in both countries are headed in the wrong direction – markedly faster south of the border.
In Canada there is a mass social democratic party linked to the labour movement. In the US, workers are, for the most part, politically disengaged and/or captives of the twin parties of Wall Street and the Pentagon. There is a great distance to travel to free the working class, hobbled by racism, sexism and anti-immigrant animus, to break from the influence of the ideas of the ruling class.
Furthermore, there is reason to fear what would happen to federal support for medicare, dental care, mandatory vacation and sick days, for childcare, public sector pensions, unemployment insurance, etc., if Canada disappeared into the USA. The result would serve the ruling class by undermining workers’ benefits for millions.
Workers’ power can flourish on this continent only by building unity in action extending to all the ranks of Labour. Objectively, workers across the Canadian state and the USA are allies. Subjectively speaking, however, it is a work in progress. The tasks ahead are enormous, and time is rather short in terms of preserving civilization and nature.
In the meantime, what about Trump’s bluster, his bullying, his trolling invitation to become the “51st State”? Our reply, without a hint of sympathy for Canadian nationalism, is simply “No, thanks!”
Editor’s note: I must say, what really shocks me is not so much that the United States, and Donald Trump in particular, is interested in annexing Canada. This has been in the thought stream for many years, much to the chagrin of many Canadians. But the reference to Canada as a “51st State” seems completely ridiculous. Canada has 10 provinces and 3 territories, is larger, in terms of land mass than the continental United States, and is rich in natural resources. It is a shocking understatement and insult to refer to Canada as a potential “state” within the United States. This bizarre conceptualization undermines the entire discussion opened by President Trump. [jb]
Barry Weisleder is Federal Secretary of Socialist Action in Canada. You can reach him at: