Trudeau Tells Economic Summit Trump’s Wish to Absorb Canada a ‘Real Thing’

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is greeted by U.S. President Donald Trump as he arrives at the White House in Washington on June 20, 2019. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau behind closed doors told attendees of the Canada-U.S. Economic Summit that U.S. President Donald Trump views absorbing Canada as a “real thing.”

After Trudeau made his opening address at the summit in Toronto on Feb. 7, media were told to leave the room but a microphone left open picked up the prime minister speaking to the business leaders, multiple media reported on Feb. 7.

“Mr. Trump has it in mind that the easiest way to do it is absorbing our country and it is a real thing,” Trudeau reportedly said when discussing U.S. interest in Canadian critical minerals. “In my conversations with him on…,” he added before the microphone cut out.

Since his election in November, Trump has repeatedly spoken of wanting Canada to become the 51st U.S. state.

During a press conference at his private club Mar-a-Lago in early January, before his inauguration, Trump said he wouldn’t use military force to annex Canada, but rather “economic force.”

“You get rid of that artificially drawn [border] line, and you take a look at what that looks like, and it would also be much better for national security,” Trump said.

More recently on Feb. 3, Trump said the best way for Canada to avoid tariffs would be to join the United States.

“If people wanted to play the game right, it would be 100 percent certain that they’d become a state,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office at the White House. “But a lot of people don’t like to play the game because they don’t have a threshold of pain.”

While Trump has often spoken of Canada becoming part of the United States, his comments haven’t been made in the context of wanting Canadian resources. Trump has instead said the United States doesn’t need Canadian oil, even though Canada currently supplies the majority of oil imported to the country. He also said his country doesn’t need Canadian lumber or car manufacturing.

Conservative MP Michael Barrett questioned the veracity of Trudeau’s comments about Trump’s talk of wanting to absorb Canada when asked by reporters on Feb. 7.

He remarked Trudeau and Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc recently said Trump’s comments had been “made in jest.”

“We’ve been told for the last several months that these comments weren’t to be believed,” Barrett said during a press conference in Ottawa. “So now we find ourselves in a situation where they’re saying that this sudden crisis has emerged with respect to these comments that for months they’ve said weren’t to be taken seriously.”

Barrett was holding a press conference to call for Parliament’s return. Trudeau asked the governor general to prorogue Parliament until March 24 when he announced his intention to step down on Jan. 6.

Barrett, who serves as ethics critic, said the questions about Trump’s comments and the management of the current situation around the threat of U.S. tariffs should he handled in the House of Commons. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says that he takes Trump’s comments on this issue seriously. “Canada will never be the fifty-first state. We will be a strong, independent, sovereign country when I am Prime Minister,” Poilievre told Toronto Sun on Feb. 7.

Trump first spoke to Trudeau about making Canada a 51st U.S. state when they met at his private club in Florida in late November. LeBlanc had attended the meeting and said afterward that Trump was only joking during “cheerful banter” between him and Trudeau.

After Trump’s comment about using “economic force” to merge with Canada, LeBlanc said he no longer viewed Trump’s repeated remarks on the matter as a joke.

“I think he has gone much further than the idea of a joke,” said LeBlanc on Jan. 8. “It’s a way for him to sow confusion, to agitate people for no reason,” the minister added. “We fully understand [merging] will never happen. What needs to happen is joint work around border security, on immigration, on the economy.”

Trudeau had also reacted by saying there “isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.”