Why On Earth Would The US Invade Canada?

A month ago, I referred to the conclusion by senior Canadian generals that if the US invaded Canada, Canadian arned forces could hold out for two days. In the same post, I also referred to a Carleton University paper that concluded, "However improbable a war with America might be, the reality is that the U.S. already has in place a number of strategies that can and will be leveraged to its advantage to achieve its strategic objectives."

(Note, by the way, that however much Canadians complain about the US referring to itself as "America", the Canadians at Carleton reflexively do it themselves.) Between them, Mark Carney and Doug Ford are slowly acknowledging that the US and Canada are at some sort of war, but the US doesn't even need to mobilize the Michigan National Guard to win it. Just for starters, the current Trump-imposed tariffs amount to a blockade without the trouble and expense of having the Navy enforce it.

But a bigger and more troubling question is why the US would ever want actually to annex Canada. The first problem is that Canadian elites are well on the way to replacing the native-born Canadian middle and working classes with third-world immigrants. According to Wikipedia,

Statistics Canada projects that immigrants will represent between 29.1% and 34.0% of Canada's population in 2041, compared with 23.0% in 2021, while the Canadian population with at least one foreign born parent (first and second generation persons) could rise to between 49.8% and 54.3%, up from 44.0% in 2021. The number of people in the category "visible minorities" is by 2041 projected to double, making up the majority of the population of cities in Canada.

In addition,

The number of Canadians who spoke predominantly a South Asian language such as Gujarati, Punjabi, Hindi or Malayalam at home grew significantly from 2016 to 2021, an increase fuelled by immigration. In fact, the growth rate of the population speaking one of these languages was at least eight times larger than that of the overall Canadian population during this period.

In addition, the Canadian standard of living has been measurably declining, and voters appear to be satisfied with this:

The gap in living standards between Canada and the U.S. has more than doubled over the past quarter-century, with Canada increasingly lagging behind the U.S., according to a new study by the Fraser Institute.

I drove to Alaska through Canada in the esrly 1980s, and I got a good impression of day-to-day life there at the time -- and things like the poor quality of restaurant food and the lack of air conditioning were noticeable then. Apparently things have only gotten worse. The link continues,

The report by the fiscally conservative think tank also found the sharpest decline occurred post-2014, meaning during the decade the Justin Trudeau government was in power.

The study compared real (inflation-adjusted) GDP per person in Canada to the U.S., a widely accepted measure of the standard of living in both countries, from 1999 to 2024.

It found in 1999, real GDP per person in Canada was $48,076 compared to $58,842 in the U.S. in constant Canadian dollars, a gap of $10,766.

But by 2024, the gap had increased to $23,757, at $59,529 in Canada compared to $83,286 in the U.S.

The study noted the steepest decline started after 2014, when Canada’s real GDP per person as a share of the U.S. economy fell from 83.1% in that year to 71.5% in 2024.

Immigration drives up social costs, lowers wages, and drives up rents. Another problem is increasingly widespread euthanasia, which is also driving down the native-born population:

REVEALED: More Canadians die from MAID each year than Americans do from gun homicideshttps://t.co/cxiRCXeWKd

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) September 22, 2026

According to Dordt University,

Since legalization, the number of euthanasia deaths in Canada has steadily grown every year and showed little sign of slowing down. Between 2016 and 2023, over 60,000 Canadians have been euthanized, with over 15,000 in 2023 alone. Euthanasia now accounts for 4.7% of all deaths in the country, a rate second only to the Netherlands. Euthanasia is now the fifth most common cause of death in Canada. Compare these numbers with Oregon, the first American state to legalize assisted suicide in 1997. In 2023, 367 people died by assisted suicide in Oregon, or just 0.8% of all deaths in the state.

Of course, Oregon and other American states only permit assisted suicide, where a doctor gives the patient the means to end their own life. In Canada, assisted suicide is permitted but nearly non-existent. Instead, MAiD deaths are almost exclusively due to euthanasia, where a doctor actively ends a patient’s life. In fact, in 2023, over 5,300 euthanasia deaths were done by just 89 medical practitioners, an average of 60 deaths each in just one year. Some Canadian doctors have become experts in killing, with one doctor “administering fatal substances” to over 400 patients.

What does it say about Canadian quality of life that checking out early seems like a good option to more and more Canadians? Why would we want people like that in the US?

It might be argued that factors like the Alberta separatist movement can serve as a check on the ambitions of the Laurentian elite who run things in Ottawa. But the Alberta separatists are pretty much delusional. Reacting to Quebec separatism, the Canadian parliament passed the Clarity Act in 2000 that

established the conditions under which the Government of Canada would enter into negotiations that might lead to secession following such a vote by one of the provinces.

. . . The key points of the legislation included the following:

- Giving the House of Commons the power to decide whether a proposed referendum question was considered clear before the public vote;

- Specifically stating that any question not solely referring to secession was to be considered unclear;

- Giving the House of Commons the power to determine whether a clear majority had expressed itself following any referendum vote, implying that some sort of supermajority is required for success;

- Stating that all provinces and the indigenous peoples were to be part of the negotiations;

- Allowing the House of Commons to override a referendum decision if it felt the referendum violated any of the tenets of the Clarity Act;

- The secession of a province of Canada would require an amendment to the Constitution of Canada.

In other words, Ottawa isn't going to allow any such thing, and it can simply override any referendum in Alberta or anywhere else. The Alberta separatist movement is a feckless waste of time -- but what does this say about the Canadian national character? Why would we want to bring people like this in?

A problem I do see is that Canada seems to be working its way into becoming a failed state, which at some point will directly affect the US, and we're seeing it already in Canada's inability or unwillingness to control forest fires, which affects US air quality. It's likely that other nuisance factors from up north will increase, and at some point, some sort of coercive action may need to be taken -- but right now, the tariff strategy seems to be effective. Let Canada continue to be Canada and stew in its own juices.