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Canada is not for sale: What constitutional history teaches us about the 51st state discourse
FILE: President Donald Trump greets Prime Minister of Canada Mark Carney, Tuesday, May 6, 2025, at the West Wing entrance of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Gabriel B Kotico via The White House/Flickr, United States government work)
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During Prime Minister Mark Carney’s visit to the White House, President Donald Trump once again suggested that Canada should become the 51st American state. Carney responded firmly, using a real estate metaphor: Canada “is not for sale.”
However, this rhetoric about the 51st state, which is starting to sound like a bad joke, has deep historical roots and has regularly resurfaced, particularly during periods of trade or political tension between the two countries. The idea of Canadian territory becoming part of the United States is even inextricably linked to three founding moments: the adoption of the Quebec Act of 1774, the Constitution of the United States of 1787, and the Canadian Constitution Act of 1867.
If history can be of any use here, it’s as a reminder that the great challenges of those times were instrumental in shaping and strengthening our nations, and that the constitution paved the way for lasting arrangements that continue to benefit us today.
The American independence movement and the Quebec Act of 1774
During their campaign for independence, American revolutionaries already wanted Canada to join them as the “14th State.” Many of us will also be surprised to learn that the Articles of Confederation of 1777, the first constitution of the United States, contain the following invitation:
Article XI. Canada acceding to this confederation, and joining in the measures of the United States, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this Union: but no other colony shall be admitted into the same, unless such admission be agreed to by nine States.
Article XI is a direct response to the Quebec Act. Considered by American revolutionaries as one of the Intolerable Acts that justified their cause, this statute of the Imperial Parliament in London conferred important advantages on French Canadians as part of a strategy to counter the independence movement in the Thirteen Colonies. Indeed, it moved Quebec’s southern border into the Ohio Valley, allowed Catholics to enter the civil service without renouncing their faith, and authorized the reintroduction of French private law in the province.
While these concessions to the French Canadians were aimed at retaining their loyalty, they also show a degree of pragmatism by political actors and society, which made historic compromises possible. Today, it’s safe to say that, had it not been for the Quebec Act, French Canadians would have eventually been assimilated into the English-speaking North American majority.
Territorial and economic threats and the U.S. Constitution of 1787
The first few years following the adoption of the Articles of Confederation quickly revealed their major flaws. In The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution, American legal historian Michael Klarman explains that, by 1786, the new Confederation seemed on the verge of collapse. Across its borders, it had to contend with the colonial ambitions of the Spanish Empire to the south, as well as the British presence to the north. On the economic front, the United States found itself dragged into a trade war not only with Europe but soon among the 13 States themselves.
Faced with this crisis, the U.S. government was powerless. The Articles of Confederation did not grant Congress the authority to raise taxes or to regulate commerce. Eventually, representatives concluded that there could only be one way out of this dead end: an overhaul of the country’s system of government. The result was the Constitution of 1787, the world’s oldest constitution still in force.
In his classic work Democracy in America (1835), Alexis de Tocqueville commented on the need to form the Union of 1787 as follows:
Small nations are often miserable, not because they are small, but because they are weak; large nations prosper, not because they are large, but because they are strong. So for nations, strength is often one of the first conditions of happiness and even of existence.
This reflection has echoed through time. In a world governed by the law of the strongest, l’union fait la force. When we’re stronger, we’re less likely to be taken advantage of, and we’re more likely to prosper.
American expansionism and the Canadian Constitution of 1867
Many of the reasons that led to Canadian Confederation are not unlike those of 1787. From the early 19th century, Canadians witnessed the United States’ large-scale territorial expansion and, later, the full might of its military power deployed during the Civil War. In 1865, our American partner threatened to terminate the 1854 Canada-U.S. Reciprocity (free trade) Treaty on fishing rights and cross-border trade in natural resources and agricultural products, a threat it carried out the following year.
Having learned de Tocqueville’s lesson, Canadian political leaders determined that a union of the British North American provinces was necessary. On July 1, 1867 (a few months after the U.S. purchase of Alaska), a Canadian federal union was born, with an interprovincial common market and the promise of an intercolonial railway.
Of course, our 1867 Constitution is not without serious flaws, but its longevity is a testament to its foundations, which future generations have appropriated to build the Canada of today.
Lessons from constitutional history for tomorrow?
Since the days of the Thirteen Colonies, there have been periodic expressions of American desire to acquire Canada. American forces even (briefly) invaded us after the Quebec Act was passed and during the War of 1812. While the rhetoric of the 51st state has temporarily subsided, its main economic policy of tariffs on Canadian imports represents an existential threat.
Canada’s (and the United States’) history reminds us that, when faced with an economically and militarily superior adversary, the most successful initiative in the long run was neither appeasement nor confrontation.
Rather, our survival and prosperity have depended on securing systemic reforms through constitutional means. On the eve of our nation’s founding moments, political actors and citizens were able to set aside temporarily their differences and forge critical alliances in the national interest.
The crisis in which we find ourselves has brought back to the fore the need to recalibrate some of our federal arrangements, particularly in the search for more substantial efficiencies within our domestic common market. As in 1774 and 1867, the Constitution could once again prove an unexpected ally.
With thanks to Jean-François Gaudreault-Desbiens, Michael Klarman, and Martine Valois.
This article first appeared on Policy Options and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
