Trump reportedly told Justin Trudeau he does not believe the border between the US and Canada is “valid” and he wants to “revise” it. Trump has also said he wants to bring Canada to its knees by driving them into economic ruin.
H/T to ChrisO_wiki on X (@ChrisO_wiki)
Donald Trump may be aiming to annex the Great Lakes – and possibly south-eastern Ontario in a maximalist scenario – and kick Canada out of NORAD, judging by first-hand accounts of talks between Canada and the Trump Administration.
The New York Times reports on first-hand accounts of what has been said in trade talks between the US and Canada, which led to Canadian PM Justin Trudeau saying publicly on March 4th that he believed Trump wanted to annex Canada.
According to the NYT, Trump has told Trudeau that “he did not believe that the treaty that demarcates the border between the two countries was valid and that he wants to revise the boundary. He offered no further explanation.”
Mr. Trump also mentioned revisiting the sharing of lakes and rivers between the two nations, which is regulated by a number of treaties, a topic he’s expressed interest about in the past.”
Afterwards, according to the Canadian Toronto Star newspaper, Trudeau was overheard saying on a hot mic that “Trump came armed with a list of trade and other irritants, and pointed to a 1908 treaty between the United States and Great Britain that established the 49th parallel as the boundary between the U.S. and the then-Dominion of Canada, suggesting it could be erased.”
US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick told Canadian finance minister Dominic LeBlanc that Trump “had come to realize that the relationship between the United States and Canada was governed by a slew of agreements and treaties that were easy to abandon.”
“He wanted to eject Canada out of an intelligence-sharing group known as the Five Eyes that also includes Britain, Australia and New Zealand.”
“He wanted to tear up the Great Lakes agreements and conventions between the two nations that lay out how they share and manage Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario.”
And he is also reviewing military cooperation between the two countries, particularly the North American Aerospace Defense Command [NORAD].
“In subsequent communications between senior Canadian officials and Trump advisers, this list of topics has come up again and again, making it hard for the Canadian government to dismiss them.”
The reference to the 1908 treaty is somewhat odd, as the National Post has pointed out: it was only one of a series of 11 treaties under which the US, Britain and Canada defined the border and divided up the management of boundary rivers and lakes.
However, Trump has repeatedly brought up the issue of water, claiming falsely that there is a “very large faucet” in British Columbia that could be “turned on” to supply water to California. (He may be referring to the Columbia River, which is governed by a US-Canada treaty).
Most of Canada’s freshwater is in fact in the Great Lakes and the St Lawrence River. The Great Lakes (with the exception of Lake Michigan) are divided roughly down the middle between the US and Canada, which controls about 60% of their surface area.
For the US to control more of the Great Lakes, it would either have to redraw the boundary along the north shores of Lakes Superior, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, or annex south-eastern Ontario, including Toronto, to gain total control of Lakes Erie and Ontario and most of Huron.
Kicking Canada out of NORAD would be even less practical – most of the North Warning System to spot incoming missiles is in Canada, as are all of the Forward Operating Locations where fighter interceptors are based. However, practicality no longer seems to be a concern.