From the Independence of the United States of America until today, various annexationist movements in Canada have campaigned in favour of U.S. annexation of parts or all of Canada. Historical studies have focused on numerous small-scale movements which are helpful in comparisons of Canadian and American politics.
In the early years of the United States, many American political figures were in favour of invading and annexing Canada, and even pre-approved Canada's admission to the U.S. in the Articles of Confederation in 1777. The defeat of American attempts to achieve this goal, both in the American Revolution and the War of 1812, gradually led to the abandonment in the U.S. of any serious push toward annexation. As historian Joseph Levitt notes, "Since the Treaty of Washington in 1871, when it first de facto recognized the new Dominion of Canada, the United States has never suggested or promoted an annexationist movement in Canada. No serious force has appeared on the American political scene that aimed to persuade or coerce Canadians into joining the United States. And, in fact, no serious initiative for any move in this direction has come from the Canadian side either."[1]
Surveys have suggested that a minority of Canadians would potentially support annexation, ranging from as many as 20 per cent in a survey by Léger Marketing in 2001[2] to as few as seven per cent in another survey by the same company in 2004.[3]
Currently there is no elected member of any federal or provincial assembly in Canada, nor any mainstream politician in the United States, who openly advocates annexation. A few small groups continue to support the concept in both countries, although none has attracted widespread support or attention.
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Historical annexationist movements inside Canada were usually inspired by dissatisfaction with Britain's colonial government of Canada. Groups of Irish immigrants took the route of armed struggle, attempting to annex the peninsula between the Detroit and Niagara Rivers to the U.S. by force in the minor and short-lived Patriot War in 1837-1838.
It is significant, however, that although the Rebellions of 1837 were motivated in part by this type of dissatisfaction, Canadian resentment of British rule never reached the degree that led to the American Revolution in 1775. Notably, Canada's population growth in the late 1700s and early 1800s was spurred largely by United Empire Loyalists, who left the American colonies during the Revolution precisely because of their loyalty to Great Britain. In the period from 1790 to 1837, imperial officials repeatedly denounced American-style republicanism and tried to suppress it. The Rebellions themselves were not fought with the goal of annexation, however, but were launched in pursuit of political independence from Britain and liberal social reforms.
Between 1848 and 1854, a significant and articulate minority of conservatives in Upper Canada advocated constitutional changes modeled on the American federal-state system and the US Constitution. They critiqued Canada's imitation of British parliamentary government as both too democratic and too tyrannical. It destroyed the independence of the appointed governor and Legislative Council and further concentrated power in the Cabinet. This critique led many conservatives to argue that the American model of checks and balances offered Canada a more balanced and conservative form of democracy than did British parliamentary government. These "republican conservatives" debated a series of constitutional changes, including annexation to the United States, an elected governor, an elected Legislative Council, a federal union of British North America, and imperial federation, within this framework. These conservatives had accepted "government by discussion" as the appropriate basis for political order.[4]
Around 1850 there was a serious annexationist movement on the border region of Quebec's Eastern Townships, where the American-descended majority felt that union with the United States would end their economic isolation and stagnation as well as remove them from the growing threat of French Canadian political domination. Leading proponents of this genuinely bipartisan movement were careful not to appear disloyal to Britain, however, and they actively discouraged popular protest at the local level. Fearful of American-style democracy, the local elite also expressed revulsion toward American slavery and militaristic expansionism. Consequently, the movement died as quickly in the Eastern Townships as it did in Montreal after Britain expressed its official disapproval and trade with the United States began to increase. [5]
In Montreal at midcentury, with little immigration and complaints that the repeal of the Corn Laws had cut the region off from its British trade links, a small but organized group supported integrating the colonies into the United States. The leading organization advocating merger was the Annexation Association, founded in 1849 by an alliance of French Canadian nationalists and Anglophone businessmen in Montreal who had a common interest in the republic. Many of its members, including Louis-Joseph Papineau, were participants in the 1837-38 rebellions.
The Montreal Annexation Manifesto was published in 1849. It was hoped a merger with the United States would give Canada markets for its goods, ensure national security, and provide the finances to develop the west. A half measure was the in 1854 Canadian-American Reciprocity Treaty that linked the two areas economically.
However, the movement died out in 1854. Annexation was never a very popular choice. Many Canadians were loyal to the Crown and Great Britain, especially the descendants of the United Empire Loyalists. French Canadians worried about being an even smaller minority in a larger union, and were concerned about American anti-Catholicism. The American Civil War, further, convinced many Canadians that the American experiment was a failure.
In the late 1860s, residents of British Columbia, which was not yet a Canadian province, responded to American purchase of Alaska with a sense of being hemmed in. Many residents wanted this frontier region to be the next American purchase. Local opinion was greatly divided as the three Vancouver Island newspapers supported annexation to the United States, while the three mainland newspapers rejected the idea. Even opponents of the annexation scheme admitted that Great Britain had neglected the region and that grievances were justified. Nonetheless, annexation sentiment disappeared within a few months and prominent leaders moved toward confederation with Canada. [Neunherz] Petitions circulated in favour of American annexation. The first, in 1867, was addressed to Queen Victoria, demanding that the British government assume the colony's debts and establish a steamer link, or allow the colony to join the U.S. In 1869, a second petition was addressed to President Ulysses S. Grant, asking him to negotiate American annexation of the territory from Britain. It was delivered to Grant by Vincent Colyer, Indian Commissioner for Alaska, on December 29, 1869. Both petitions were signed by only a small fraction of the colony's population, and British Columbia was ultimately admitted as a Canadian province in 1871.[6]
However, most Canadians were strongly opposed to the prospect of American annexation. Reports of the Annexation Bill of 1866 — a bill that, contrary to myth, never came to a vote — might have been one of the many factors behind Canadian Confederation in 1867. Much more serious were the Fenian raids made by Irish Americans across the border in 1866, which spurred a wave of patriotic feeling that helped the confederate cause.[7]
In 1891, academic Goldwin Smith posited in his book Canada and the Canadian Question that Canada's eventual annexation by the United States was inevitable, and should be welcomed if Canadians genuinely believed in the ideal of democracy. His view did not receive widespread support.[8]
In January 1893, concerned about Canada's possible annexation, a goal then being pursued by the so-called Continental Union Association, a group of Ontario and Quebec Liberals, Prime Minister Sir John Thompson delivered a speech on tolerance, Canadian nationalism and continued loyalty to Britain. Thompson eventually learned that the desire to make Canada part of the U.S. was confined to a small minority among the Liberals.
A few modern groups have contested provincial elections on platforms which have proposed that their province secede from Canada to join the United States. As of 2009, no such group has ever attracted significant support in a provincial election.
The Unionest Party was a provincial political party in Saskatchewan in 1980 that promoted the union of the western provinces with the United States. It was the most politically successful annexationist group, but its success was both short-lived and extremely limited in scope. The party briefly had two members in the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan, both of whom crossed the floor from another party, but dissolved within a few weeks after failing to qualify for official party status.[9]
Parti 51 was a short-lived political party in Quebec in the 1980s that advocated Quebec's admission to the United States as the 51st state. The party won just 3,846 votes, or 0.11 per cent of the popular vote in the province, in the 1989 election — fewer votes than the Marxist-Leninists or the satirical Lemon Party — and was dissolved the following year.[10]
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 ironically 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".[11] 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.[12]
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.[13] 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".
   | Ontario USA - www.ontariousa.org |
| | CTV: 4 in 10 Americans support annexing Canada: Poll - CTV.ca | 4 in 10 Americans support annexing Canada: Poll |
| | Ontario USA - BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition |
| | The Republic of Northern America - TheStar.com | Opinion | The Republic of Northern America |
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