Annexation Movements of Canada - Anti-annexation Rhetoric

Anti-annexation Rhetoric

In modern Canadian political discourse, the idea of Canada becoming the "51st state" of the United States is much more often used as a scare tactic against political courses of action that may be seen as too "Americanizing". The use of this type of rhetoric may occur even if the proponents of such a course of action have not endorsed or proposed annexation.

In the 1911 federal election, the Conservative response to the proposed reciprocity treaty negotiated by the Liberals was to denounce it as equivalent to an American economic takeover, with annexation likely to follow. The parties swapped position in the later 1988 federal election, when the Liberals used the same type of rhetoric to denounce the Progressive Conservatives' proposed Canada – United States Free Trade Agreement, although the Progressive Conservatives won that election and the agreement was implemented.

Annexation fears can be found throughout Canadian History for Dummies, in which humourist Will Ferguson stated that for "John L. O'Sullivan, it was the "manifest destiny" of the United States to annex and possess all of North America". In fact, O'Sullivan's use of the term never extended beyond potential American annexation of Texas and the Oregon Territory; he explicitly wrote that he did not believe that the United States had a destiny to annex Canada.

Political satirists, including the Rhinoceros Party of Canada, have occasionally proposed reverse annexation, whereby all or part the United States would be annexed into an expanded Canadian federation. Following the 2004 American election, some Americans distributed the satirical Jesusland map on the Internet, depicting a similar proposal under which the "blue states" were part of a new political entity called "The United States of Canada".