Television personality Kevin O’Leary says he wants to “start the narrative” with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to negotiate a deal that would merge the economies of Canada and the U.S. O’Leary claimed on X, formerly known as Twitter, that “Canadians over the holidays have been talking about this.”
The Florida-based entrepreneur appeared on Fox Business weeks after Trump’s quip that Canada should become the 51st state of the U.S. and taunting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by calling him a “governor.”
“I like this idea and at least half of Canadians are interested,” O’Leary claimed. “Nobody wants Trudeau to negotiate this deal … I don’t want him doing it for me, so I’m going to go to Mar-a-Lago.”
There’s 41 million Canadians sitting on the world’s largest amounts of all resources, including the most important, energy and water. Canadians over the holidays have been talking about this. They want to hear more. What this could be is the beginning of an economic union. Think… pic.twitter.com/yp5PuLgxZJ
— Kevin O’Leary aka Mr. Wonderful (@kevinolearytv) December 26, 2024
On the American program, he talked about the possibilities for sharing resources, using a common currency, creating a new EU-like passport and figuring out taxes across the board.
He added that “of the 41 million Canadians, I think most of them would trust me on this deal.”
A poll from Leger earlier this month found that only 13 per cent of Canadians are warm to the idea of the country becoming the “51st state.”
On Monday, Trump reposted a tweet from Leading Report about O’Leary’s idea. But an expert cautions that information about a unified economy could get misrepresented.
Nelson Wiseman is a professor emeritus in political science at University of Toronto.
“He didn’t call for America and Canada to become one country,” he tells Yahoo Canada. “What he did call for is a customs’ union, and this is something that’s been called for in the past, going back to right around the time of Confederation.”
Wiseman says calls for a common currency is an idea that was getting a lot of attention in the early 2000s, when the value of the Canadian dollar dropped to 60 U.S. cents. The issue there he says would mean that Canada could not control its own interest rates since there wouldn’t be a central bank.
Wiseman says the agreement could like something “along the lines of the European Union.”
“France is a member of the EU. They use the Euro, and there’s no customs duties on anything going back and forth between national borders.”
He adds that O’Leary is arguing that Canada and the U.S. combined economies could be “the most dynamic economy in the world, but it’s being taken as he wants to get rid of Canada.
“That’s not what he’s saying at all.”
On a subreddit dedicated to Trump’s tweets, some users voiced their disdain for O’Leary representing Canada in any kind of political or financial deal.
“O’Leary is deliberately misrepresenting the public sentiment in Canada about this,” kekili8115 wrote. “Most Canadians find such remarks from Trump downright absurd and demeaning. O’Leary is prepared to degrade his own country and even burn it to the ground, purely for the sake of money and publicity. He’s an embarrassment to himself and his country.”
O’Leary unsuccessfully ran to lead the federal Conservatives in 2017 but dropped out when he couldn’t garner enough support. Instead he endorsed Maxime Bernier.
“It really begs the question of who’s pushing the narrative and for what purpose?” user David Johnson wrote on X. “There are people of power who are willing to manipulate any system or any changes to the system to their own advantage, not necessarily for the benefit of the Canadian people.”
