‘Give your head a shake!’: Canada’s former leader Chretien tells Trump

President-elect Donald Trump. File
| Photo Credit: AFP

President-elect Donald Trump’s remarks that Canada should become the 51st state drew condemnation and a patriotic outburst on Saturday (January 11, 2025) from a former Canadian Prime Minister who offered blunt advice to the incoming U.S. leader.

“Give your head a shake!”, said Jean Chretien joined a chorus of officials from the northern U.S. neighbour who say Mr. Trump’s remarks are no longer a joke and may undermine America’s closest ally.

Canada would never agree to become part of the U.S., Mr. Chretien wrote in an article published in The Globe and Mail newspaper, celebrating his 91st birthday.

He extolled his nation’s love of independence and said Trump’s remarks amounted to “totally unacceptable insults and unprecedented threats” to Canadian sovereignty.

“To Donald Trump, from one old guy to another, give your head a shake!” Mr. Chretien said. “What could make you think that Canadians would ever give up the best country in the world — and make no mistake that is what we are — to join the United States?” Mr. Trump has tossed expansionist rhetoric not just at Canada but also at other U.S. allies, with arguments that the frontiers of American power need to be extended to the Danish territory of Greenland, and southward to include the Panama Canal.

And while many European leaders have been measured in their response, Canadians have not held back.

“If you think that threatening and insulting us is going to win us over, you really don’t know a thing about us,” Chretien wrote in the article. “We may look easy-going, mild-mannered. But make no mistake, we have spine and toughness.” The US imports approximately 60 per cent of its crude oil from Canada, which is also the top export destination for 36 US states. Nearly USD 2.7 billion worth of goods and services cross the border each day.

Canadian officials have been talking to incoming Trump administration officials about increasing border security in an effort to avoid a sweeping 25 per cent tariff that Trump has threatened to impose on all Canadian products.

When Trump imposed higher tariffs during his first term in office, other countries responded with retaliatory tariffs of their own. Canada announced billions of new duties in 2018 against the US in a tit-for-tat response to new taxes on Canadian steel and aluminium.