Inch by inch, the tale does go, America would like to grow. Canadians say no, no, no, or at least so says a new report.
Amid President Donald Trump’s repeated invocation of Canada as the 51st state, a report in The Telegraph says Trump adviser Peter Navarro wants to redraw the border between the two countries.
Navarro is pushing U.S. negotiators in trade talks to put a new border on the table, the report said.
“Navarro recommended revising the Canada-U.S. border, which is just crazy and dangerous,” what the Telegraph called “a source close to negotiations” was quoted as saying.
Canada has decided to scurry in a hurry from the talks, hoping that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Jamieson Greer, who Trump has nominated to be his trade representative, will steer talks in a more comfortable direction.
The Telegraph report said Canadians view Lutnick and Greer as “less extreme.”
Greer was confirmed on Wednesday. Lutnick was confirmed last week.
“The Canadians have told their people to hold off negotiating with the U.S. government until Jamieson Greer and Howard Lutnick are confirmed by the Senate and in post,” the source said.
The Telegraph said its source framed Navarro as pushing an agenda while Greer and Lutnick were not yet on board.
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“Peter Navarro is in post, and he is taking advantage of being there by himself with no one else in post to challenge his extreme positions. This will change as soon as the many other trade and economic positions are filled,” the source said.
“By default of no competition, he is temporarily ruling the roost.” the source added.
Trump has said he believes America’s relationship with Canada is lopsided.
“We protect Canada, but it’s not fair. It’s not fair that they’re not paying their way, and if they had to pay their way they couldn’t exist,” he said.
The current border has been in place for more than a century, as noted by Digital History.
The Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 finalized the boundaries between Canada and Maine as well as the section of the border between Lake Superior and Lake of the Woods.
The Pacific Northwest boundary was not settled until later, when the 1846 Oregon Treaty drew the land boundary between the two nations along the 49th parallel, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia.
The 1859 Pig War, which began in a dispute over a pig killed on the U.S. side of the border, brought conflict to the Vancouver Islands off of Washington state until the dispute was resolved in America’s favor with the pig being the sole casualty. George Pickett, later of Civil War fame at Gettysburg, commanded some of the American forces in the squabble, according to the National Park Service.
Efforts to invade Canada from western New York in the name of Irish Fenians took place between 1866 and 1871, but ended in failure, according to History.com.
As noted by the Theodore Roosevelt Center, it was not until 1903 that most of the Alaska-Canada border issues were resolved.
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