Canada on Trump’s proposed union: Thanks, but let’s just Be friends

The bill didn’t go anywhere. And neither will President-elect Donald Trump’s idea of Canada becoming the 51st state, say Canadians of all stripes.

Canadians have largely tolerated Trump’s trolling of their soon-departing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. But the president-elect’s explicit call on Tuesday to coerce Canada into the U.S.—by “economic force," if necessary—has raised patriotic hackles in the normally easygoing country of 40 million people.

“One of the reasons Canada exists is to be separate from the U.S.," said Gregory Tardi, a lawyer who worked as a senior counsel to Canada’s House of Commons.

What is now Canada was populated in part by thousands of British Loyalists who fled the American Revolution and wanted to stay with the British Empire. The country still retains many of its British roots, including counting King Charles III as its head of state.

To join the U.S., Canada would have to shed its constitutional monarchy and become a republic, which would require approval from both houses of Canada’s federal parliament and the legislatures of each of Canada’s 10 provinces, said Tardi.

Both chambers of the U.S. Congress would also need to authorize a new state. And that new state would be the largest by both population and size.

Canada’s Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, leading in the polls to be Canada’s next prime minister in an election that has to happen by October, said Canada is America’s “best friend." It sacrificed lives and billions of dollars helping the U.S. respond to the Sept. 11 attacks, he said.

But, he added: “We are a great and independent country."

“Canada will never be the 51st state. Period," he said.

Trump had floated the idea of annexing Canada before. He met with Trudeau and some of his cabinet ministers at dinner at his Mar-a-Lago club in November, and told the Canadian leader that Canada should become America’s 51st state if it wanted to avoid U.S. tariffs.

Canadian government officials at the time discounted the comment as a joke. One official noted that Trump had said similar things during his first term in office and it made sense for Trudeau to ignore the jab, even when Trump took to posting AI-generated pictures of himself standing next to a Canadian flag and calling the prime minister “governor."

The senior official said the tone of Trump’s comments on Tuesday was more serious, which prompted Trudeau to respond publicly.

“There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States," Trudeau said in a social-media post on Tuesday.

Trump’s comments are in keeping with his practice of asking for the maximum at the start of a negotiation to get more concessions in the end, said Gerald Butts, a former senior adviser to Trudeau and now vice chairman of the Eurasia Group consulting firm.

“I think he’s trying to expand the boundary of what is possible when it comes to negotiations," said Butts. “He obviously has in mind some concessions that he wants to extract at some point, and he’s establishing the bar extraordinarily high."

Trump has complained that Canada needs to secure its border to limit the flow of migrants and drugs into the U.S., and spend more money on defense. Canada is the U.S.’s second-largest trading partner after Mexico, and Trump has complained about Washington’s trade deficit with its northern neighbor, claiming Canada is taking advantage of the U.S.

Canadian reactions to Trump’s latest comments addressed some of his complaints, and sought to emphasize shared U.S.-Canadian interests, particularly in the global contest with China and Russia.

“When I am Prime Minister, we will rebuild our military and take back control of the border to secure both Canada and the U.S. We will take back control of our Arctic to keep Russia and China out," Poilievre said.

Danielle Smith, leader of the oil-rich province of Alberta, which sends most of its oil to U.S. refineries, called Canada “a strong, independent nation" and noted that it is one of the largest customers of U.S. goods and services. She said the U.S. and Canada should work together to fight what she called unfair Chinese trade practices.

Doug Ford, leader of Canada’s most populous province, Ontario, went on Fox News on Tuesday night and said Trump’s comments recall his past life as a real-estate tycoon. “But that property is not for sale," he said, referring to Canada. Instead, he proposed that America and Canada create “fortress Am-Can" to boost their economic security.

Ford had previously threatened to shut off the electricity Ontario provides to 1.5 million homeowners in Michigan, Minnesota and New York if Trump moves ahead with tariffs.

Some Canadians, however, seemed open to the idea of joining the U.S. Noemi Soloviov, a 76-year-old retired schoolteacher who spends half the year in Toronto and the other half in Florida, said Canada would benefit by attaching itself to one of the world’s most powerful countries.

“All that power would accrue to Canada," she said. “If it was me, I’d start negotiating right now."

Paul Vieira in Ottawa contributed to this article.

Write to Vipal Monga at vipal.monga@wsj.com