I just spent eight days in Canada attending the Arctic Winter Games (AWG) in Whitehorse. After seeing how their country is run, I now understand why President Trump is threatening to make Canada the 51st state.
First, the disclaimer. Every Canadian I met was polite and friendly, even the protestors. The venues were world-class, new and well-maintained. The people there were wonderful hosts, and I appreciated the hospitality they showed us. They put on a fantastic event, and for that I am grateful.
However, Canada isn’t acting like a responsible independent country. I say this based on what I saw. Canada is the country-sized equivalent of the 30-year-old kid with no job, living in his parents’ basement. We all know someone with a kid like this who says he can’t afford to chip in for rent or groceries but somehow finds the money to buy a brand-new Xbox, while complaining about how badly his parents treat him. That’s Canada.
Canada is a socialist country, which its citizens voted for and like. They believe their system of government is superior to that of the United States. I even met two Canadian retirees who were employed in the U.S. for most of their working life, then emigrated back to Canada when they retired. They said they did this to access the free Canadian medical system. They never paid a penny into it during their careers but were more than happy to take advantage of the system that Canada taxes its workers to pay for. That is Canada in a nutshell.
Another example of the fiscal profligacy of the Canadian government was the lavish Canada Games Center in Whitehorse, where many of the AWG events were held. It is the largest venue of its kind in northern Canada, with facilities for basketball, hockey, figure skating, an indoor running track, racquet sports, a must-see-to-be-believed indoor water park, and meeting rooms. For recreation, this place has everything you could ask for, and yet Whitehorse is smaller than Fairbanks, with little tax base to support it.
There is only one way Canadians can enjoy free healthcare or extravagant sports facilities. They acquire them the way our NATO allies do; Canada spends little money on its military and uses the savings to fund its lavish social programs. It knows that the United States will defend it in times of trouble. One example is the complicated radar system the U.S. built around Canada to warn of an attack by Russia or China. They are literally surrounded by expensive American-built radar systems on all their coastlines, enjoying the protection of America’s military, with the majority of the costs paid by the U.S.
Ironically, the danger to Canada isn’t from attacks from outside its country; it is the sympathy it shows for people who hate the USA. I talked with Canadian protestors at the Arctic Winter Games who were opposed to the U.S. war against Iran and were waving Palestinian flags to show sympathy for the Iranian government. Palestinian flags? Iran? That evidently makes sense to a Canadian protestor.
Many Canadians support Iran. Last week, Canada allowed Iranian Cleric Hojatoleslam Morteza Tayebi to enter the country after fleeing the Iranian war. This individual has dual citizenship in both Iran and Canada. He is not alone in this respect. Reports are that Canada has allowed over 700 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to enter their country. The government has admitted that it knows of at least 28 IRGC terrorists in the country who should be deported, but its own ineffective legal system makes it difficult to do so. In the last three years, they have only been able to deport one of these individuals.
The result of this policy is about what you might expect: an increase in terrorism in their country. Just a few days ago, on March 14, one day after the Iranian mullah entered the country, two Iranian regime loyalists murdered an Iranian dissident in Vancouver. Masood Masjoody was an Iranian freedom advocate who used his position as a professor at Simon Fraser University to speak out against the Islamic regime running his former country and to urge support the U.S. intervention against it. Masjoody was killed by two Iranians loyal to the IRGC. You have to wonder how long it will be until similar acts of terrorism leak across the border into this country.
The United States could probably tolerate a neighbor that mooches off of us, as long as they were a reliable ally. However, with their demonstrated tolerance for terrorists, Canada is starting to act like the deadbeat kid in the basement, who invites criminal friends over for a party. At some point, the parents need to lay down the law, get the kid to put down the game controller, and act like a responsible adult. That is what President Trump is trying to do when he threatens to make Canada the 51st state. We should pray that he is successful.
The views expressed here are those of Greg Sarber. Read more Sarber posts at his Seward’s Folly substack.
24 Comments
This is of the stupidest articles I’ve read in a long time. Alberta fine (if they want to). But the rest of that country? Are you kidding me? Leftists galore. Islamists and aggrieved Natives as well. Many who do not have American values or are not Christians. Hard no. I get no more of their freeloading. We should stop that. Yokeing ourselves to them? Nuts.
One would hope age brings wisdom.
Finally an American citizen who gets the problem of bringing a communist country under the U.S. umbrella; even Alberta would be challenaging because their north west & east borders would be open to whomever wanted to transit across & into the United States. I say BUILD A NORTHERN WALL!!! I get why Trump wants to convert Canada into states … so we can build a bigger & better golden dome … maybe Musk’s idea of using satalites to anchor solar devices to could also be a better way to anchor a golden dome onto
Agree ! Alberta only!
I don’t agree with this article, nor the high handed comments. Ok, go ahead, think of us as you will. Just stop being fixated on us. l You have other countries to harrass.
Sorry, no. We simply need a hard border between us and them, so that they don’t send in the terrorists they harbor. I have no use for a country in which you must defend your innocence because you are presumed guilty if arrested. I have no use for a country in which they approve of murdering the elderly and ill. I have no use for a country that claims great healthcare and then makes people wait days and weeks and months for cancer care. Sorry, but we can’t afford to educate these fools on our dime.
“Many who do not have American values or are not Christians.” That was a dumb thing to write.
It is a vital thing to write. No more freeloaders. That includes work visas or remittances to India. Indian culture with its caste system is not compatible with American values, nor is Hinduism with Christianity. No more. Time to go back to your home. This is ours.
First Nations or ‘Indians’ as American say, or Natives as some prefer, were here for thousands of years. That means the rest of us need to pack up and head back ‘home’ to where our roots started.
I don’t think so Judith. This is our country. You are free to leave though…
Umm, if I had a deadbeat kid in my basement, I’d kick him out of the house in the interest of preserving the innocence and integrity of my family. I would not invite him to bring himself and all his brain-numbing crap upstairs. But Canada isn’t family, it’s an independent nation. Ours was not founded to subsume other nations that have succumbed to idiocy.
Its Canadians choice to join the United States as the 51’st state if the chose or if the country splits itself up into territories of the United States before each petitions to become a state. It’ll definitely give the United Stated more control of the Arctic. I think that’s the only reason Trump floats the idea for Canada to join the USA. It’s for the Arctic.
This is one of the best Seward’s Folly columns my spouse and I have read. It was a perfect analogy used to describe the abnormal dependence Canada has on America. As for the two retirees who chose the Canadian healthcare system? Good luck at their age getting proper care in a timely manner. Hopefully they will not be told their only choice to a serious medical or psychiatric illness is Canada’s Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID) forced euthanasia program.
All of Canada? No. Western Canada? No, but with caveats. Everybody is taking about making Alberta the 51st state. I tell Canadians that it’s a bad idea. You are getting rid of one slave master (Ottawa) and taking on a new slave master (DC). Go a different route- Create a new country and become a protectorate of the U.S.. Western Canada has complained that Ottawa has used them as a wallet to keep eastern Canada propped up. Became your own country, no longer be Ottawa’s wallet, no longer having to deal with Ottawa’s communist edicts. Create a new destiny and future for western Canada.
how about making it a territory for say about 100 years and then control the resources to the end of time.
Like Alaska
Seward’s Folly may want to rethink the all of Canada after watching Canadian police publicly doing a zoomba dance. https://x.com/i/status/1930156592416292973
Canada for Canadians. We tried to annex Canada in 1775-76 and again in the War of 1812. It was a tepid failure each time. Their history, culture and systems are not American. Why should they be? We are acting more and more like Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, demonizing our neighbors, pretending they are a threat to us, believing we hold super-human powers, harking back to a vainglorious past, acting like bullies with junior high school imaginations. I don’t like Iranian culture, but the people there are victims of their own culture. But so are the Russians, Chinese, Brits, Scandinavians, Australians, Argentinians, Italians — just about everybody, including AMERICANS. We are bombing Iran for the Israeli State, and we are doing it because of the heretical interpretations of the Bible. We would not go to war because of a Catholic Biblical interpretation, so why should we do it because of an Evangelical? COME HOME, America!
> COME HOME, America!
From your cry to God’s ears. America First and only.
Not all Evangelicals are Zionists, Bob (but far too many are, sadly). I do not support that interpretation of Israel (derived in recent times from notes in the Scofield Study Bible), and there are many more like me.
Totally agree with you Bob.
You’re all wet Bob!! Sounds like dementia has set in!!
No, Bob, we are not bombing Iran over some supposed Biblical prophesy, nor are we doing it for Israel. We are bombing Iran because they have become and existential threat to our country. Did you not believe them when they chanted Death to America? They meant it, and they are very close to making it become a reality. But hey, if you think protecting our country makes us communists or fascists, there’s not a lot that will make the case for you that we are certainly not. Honestly, you sound as silly as the leftists who actually ARE communists.
OMG, this is dumb. Fix the United States first.
Liz. I’m a democrat too.
And to think I was about to join the Alaska Party! Thanks for talking me out of it Mr Bird! I think it’s called anti-semitism.
Stu Davies