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The Cherished State of Canada in the U. S. Congress [1]
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Date: 2025-05-08
His talk about making Canada the 51st state had a decisive effect in Canada’s recent election, hugely bolstering anti-Trump forces. But yesterday, meeting with Prime Minster Mark Carney, who kept his office thanks to this backlash, Trump kept pushing the idea. — Paul Krugman
Trump’s talk about annexing Canada is only talk. There is no serious thought behind it.
The entire nation of Canada has pointed out that Canada will not have it.
Most of the U.S. is against it.
International law, treaties, alliances. . . .
etc., etc. . . .
blah blah, blah . . .
But I have not seen much comment on the effect on the U.S. House and Senate.
Consider: If we take the 40 million people of Canada as our new “cherished” state, it will be our largest state, larger than California (39 million) or Texas (30 million).
California has 52 representatives in the House of Representatives. Let’s say that Canada will have the same. So, Canada will have 52 of 487 members, or just over 10% of the members.
Now, here comes the math (and the law). The Apportionment Act of 1911 says that the membership of the House of Representatives will be capped at 435 members. See Wikipedia (from which all knowledge flows) US House of Representatives.
They did increase this number to 437 when Alaska and Hawaii became states, but those states only had one representative each, and at the next election they returned to 435 members. What that meant was that somewhere between 1959 and 1963, two states that had had two representatives were demoted to one representative each.
Or so it seems. The math is a little more complicated. See US Census Bureau, “Computing Apportionments.” It could have happened that, in 1963, a state that had had, say, seven representatives, would be reduced to six – or something similar to that.
Suffice it to say that in order for Canada and California to have the 86 representatives — out of 435 — that they would be entitled to by law, the other 49 states would have to give up 40 representatives or so. States that have two or three representatives would be reduced to one. States that have 14 representatives would be reduced to 12. And so on.
The math is beyond my capabilities. But the chaos of the process is easy to imagine. And until someone actually makes a proposal – in detail – to include Canada in the U.S. legislature, then all the talk of our “cherished” 51st state is only the blathering of a buffoon.
* * *
There is, of course, another possibility. The ten provinces of Canada could become states 51 to 60. The math of the House of Representatives would be no less difficult, but the makeup of the Senate would become more interesting.
The “states” of Canada would elect 20 Senators of a Senate of 120.
The Democratic Caucus would be pleased.
Ontario would be our fifth largest state; Quebec our twelfth largest; British Columbia our twenty-somethingth largest state. Newfoundland is about the same population as Wyoming, our least populous state.
Only Prince Edward Island (177,000) is smaller in population than all our other states; but hey! We already have two full states smaller in population than our (un-represented) District of Columbia, and five states – the Dakotas, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming – have a smaller population than St. Louis County, Missouri. [Not the city of St. Louis, only the county around it.] So population isn’t everything.
But to get back to the point. Until the buffoon-in-chief puts forward a proposal regarding Canada that addresses Congressional representation and numbers of states, senators, etc., and until he places that proposal before the Congress, so that it can be debated among the states which will lose a portion of their legislative power, it’s all talk.
Destructive, malevolent talk, but still talk.
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