Why western Canada should join the US

I was born in Saskatchewan and have no intention of returning. It’s the Siberia of Canada, an area bigger than France – where I now live – with the population of Buffalo, New York. It’s sucked dry by Ottawa. Elon Musk was here, and left. And it has winter temperatures of -40 degrees.

Alberta has slightly more going for it: skiing, bears. But Albertans aren’t gruntled, either. The last time I was in Calgary I had lunch at the elite Ranchmen’s Club and the chatter was seditious. The talk was of Wexit – the separation of western Canada from the bloodsucking east.

Then there’s Plan B. While it’s possible that western Canada could go it alone – seceding from the dominion and declaring independence – it’s hardly the only option. Now that Mark Carney has been elected to replace Justin Trudeau, I have a better idea. Take Donald Trump at his word and attach western Canada to the United States. Memo to the Pentagon: the North Dakota national guard could achieve this in 24 hours. The RCMP post at Moose Jaw couldn’t defend Canada against the Salvation Army.

It is hard to overstate the contempt in western Canada for the Liberal party, which believes that taxes on carbon will change the weather and that boys can be girls. Regime media like the CBC and the newspapers, subsidized by the government, are trying to whip up anti-American hatred, with some success. Trump’s punitive tariffs have exposed a country that’s pitifully dependent on its southern neighbor. But in the west, many don’t want a trade war with the United States. They want in. And the time is now.

Carney is a disaster for Saskatchewan and Alberta, the personification of elite presumption, according to John Robson in the Dorchester Review. “His power is his dullness,” says Daniel Béland, a political sociologist at McGill University. But his dullness conceals his contempt for the west, which has been ignored and betrayed by the eastern elites.

The Liberals got back into office by harvesting votes in Québec and Ontario that they bought with western Canada’s money. His platitudes notwithstanding, Carney can be expected to treat western Canada with precisely the same insouciance as his unlamented predecessor, Justin Trudeau. I am not proposing these provinces be admitted to the United States for a mess of pottage. Saskatchewan is thinly populated but we bring a lot to the party so if I were in charge of the accession negotiations I would demand two US Senate seats for us and two more for Alberta.

Take Donald Trump at his wordand attach western Canadato the United States

We’re worth it. It may have been some time since the attention of Americans was focused on the Canadian prairies. But just to jog the memory of the 30 seconds spent on this subject in American schools, Saskatchewan not only has vast cereal production, huge reserves of oil the Liberals won’t let us extract, but it’s also home to 40 percent of the world’s potash, a lot of coal and some gold and rare earths. Add in Alberta and you get more oil plus the Rocky Mountains.

Woke doesn’t cut it in the west. We like guns and pickup trucks. I was in my hometown of Weyburn a while ago and visited the heritage village documenting the settlement of Saskatchewan. These were some of the toughest men and women ever. The mayor showed me around: a professional courtesy as I was an elected local councilor in France at the time. Not very diverse, I noted, not much evidence of immigration. “We don’t even want to live here,” he replied.

When the Americans arrive to liberate us, internal resistance is likely to be minimal. There are some redoubts at the universities, and of course at the CBC bureaux in Calgary and Regina. These are not folks who know how to drive combine harvesters. They are unlikely to delay the putsch for more than five minutes.

Trump, ironically, is probably more responsible than anyone for the Liberal comeback and is wrong to the edge of nuts to think about annexing all of Canada. He hasn’t thought this through. Ontario is the number one place America doesn’t want.  It’s a lost cause, a province captured by pointy-headed progressives. Fourth graders are taken by their teachers to Palestine demos. Yonge Street in Toronto looks like a portal to Hell, with zoned-out dopers decorating the sidewalks. That Ontario’s voters overwhelmingly chose the Liberals once more is perhaps not astonishing because this is the party that legalized marijuana. It’s the party that is euthanizing depressed teenagers; the party that has presided over a stagnant economy and raging inflation.

Québec is nothing but trouble, obsessed with Francophonie and, if admitted as a US state, would demand that hot dogs be renamed chiens chauds. Many of the Québécois harbor the delusion they are French, though they are incomprehensible to actual Frenchmen. Let them join France.

British Columbia on the west coast is overrun with Chinese money and looks like a cadet version of Hong Kong. Downtown Vancouver is the fentanyl capital of North America and it looks west, not south. The second language is Chinese. Mr. President, you don’t want them. Let Manitoba speak for itself. I have never met anyone from Manitoba. The eastern provinces – Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island – should probably be attached to Greenland, for administrative purposes.

The point is that Canada is simply not viable as a standalone country. It is utterly fractured, completely incapable of contributing anything material to the defense of North America, its institutions completely captured by a blob grown fat on Tim Horton’s donuts and the tax farming of the west.

When I was last in Toronto, I saw a fellow Canadian wearing a T-shirt bearing the slogan “The world needs more Canada.” But does the world need Canada at all?

The hysterical Canadian nationalist outpouring, in which my imbecilic countrymen boycotted California strawberries and set fire to Teslas in response to Trump’s tariffs, unfortunately dominated the election campaign and delayed a long-overdue debate on the more important question: what use is Canada? For Alberta and Saskatchewan, not much. Mr. Trump, tear down that border!

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s May 2025 World edition.