Fact check: Debunking Trump’s false claims about Canada

By Daniel Dale, CNN

Washington (CNN) — President-elect Donald Trump keeps making false claims about Canada.

Trump has spoken repeatedly in the past month about somehow turning the independent country to the north into the 51st US state. It is not clear whether Trump’s self-proclaimed “great idea” is mere trolling, a serious desire or an unorthodox negotiating tactic in bilateral discussions over trade, immigration and national security.

What is clear is that Trump has peppered his comments about Canada with inaccurate assertions – about how the Canadian public views the idea of US annexation, about the trade relationship and about Canada’s defense situation.

Here is a fact check of some of his remarks.

Canadians’ views on becoming the 51st state

Trump said Thursday of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: “I called him Governor Trudeau because they should be the 51st state, really. It would make a great state. And the people of Canada like it.”

Facts First: Trump’s categorical claim that “the people of Canada like it” is false. Though it’s certainly possible to find Canadians who support the idea of Canada becoming the 51st state, the idea is overwhelmingly unpopular with the Canadian public as a whole. A December poll by the firm Leger found that 82% of Canadians said they didn’t like the idea and just 13% said they liked it.

The idea has been denounced by federal and provincial Canadian leaders from left to right.

The US trade deficit with Canada

Trump said Tuesday that the US has a “$200 billion” trade deficit with Canada.

Facts First: False. The US goods and services trade deficit with Canada was about $40.6 billion in 2023, according to the US government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, nowhere close to “$200 billion.” Even if you only consider trade in goods and ignore the services trade at which the US excels, the US deficit with Canada was about $72.3 billion in 2023, the bureau reported, still far shy of Trump’s figure. And it’s worth noting that the deficit is overwhelmingly caused by the US importing a large quantity of inexpensive Canadian oil, which helps keep Americans’ gas prices down.

Trump regularly describes US trade deficits as subsidies to other countries or losses to those countries, and he has done the same when talking about Canada. But having a trade deficit with Canada doesn’t mean the US is giving Canada free money. Rather, it means the US spent more to import Canadian products in a given year than Canada spent to import American products.

And the US deficit with Canada is largely the result of the US bringing in a lot of one Canadian product: about 3.9 million barrels of crude oil per day on average in 2023. Trump argued Tuesday that “we don’t need anything” from Canada, but heavy crude from the Alberta oil sands is in high demand by US refineries, mostly in the Midwest, that are designed to process heavy crude – into products like gasoline and diesel – rather than the lighter crude the US tends to extract domestically.

“If (hypothetically) Canadian oil were not available, many US refineries would struggle to find heavy crude elsewhere, and they might even stop operating in such a scenario. Historically, Venezuela had been a large producer of heavy crude, but Venezuela’s oil industry is a shadow of its former self,” Pavel Molchanov, an energy expert who is an investment strategy analyst at Raymond James, said in an email.

“So, in fact, importing Canadian oil helps protect jobs in the US refining industry.
Furthermore, US refining companies appreciate the fact that Canadian heavy crude is cheaper than the light sweet crude that is produced in Texas and Louisiana.”

Canada’s defense spending

Trump chided Canada for failing to meet NATO’s guideline of having each member country spend 2% of its gross domestic product on defense; Canada’s failure to hit the target has been a bipartisan concern in the US for years. Trump told reporters Thursday: “They pay less than 1%. They’re about the lowest payer in NATO. They’re supposed to pay much more. They haven’t been paying.”

Facts First: Trump was wrong when he said Canada spends “less than 1%” of GDP on defense, though it’s true that Canada has consistently fallen short of the 2% target. Official NATO figures show Canada spent an estimated 1.37% of GDP on defense in 2024, up from an estimated 1.31% in 2023. Canada was above 1% for the entirety of Trump’s first presidency, ranging from 1.44% in 2017 to 1.29% in 2019.

There’s a solid basis for Trump’s claim that Canada is “about the lowest payer in NATO.” In terms of defense spending as a percentage of GDP, NATO’s preferred metric, Canada was 5th lowest in 2024 out of the 31 members with a standing army (another member, Iceland, does not have a standing army). Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama, also pressed Canada to increase its defense spending, which Trudeau has done.

But Canadian defense policy expert Stephen Saideman noted in an email that in absolute terms – not factoring in the size of each member’s economy – Canada is actually one of NATO’s largest spenders on defense; it was 8th highest in 2024 out of 31 members excluding Iceland.

“Despite spending less than 2%, Canada is still one of the biggest spenders on military stuff – its economy is larger than most NATO members, so in absolute terms, it buys and spends a lot,” said Saideman, the Paterson Chair in International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa and director of the Canadian Defence and Security Network.

Trudeau, who announced last week that he plans to resign as prime minister when his Liberal Party selects a new leader, said last year that his government would continue to increase defense spending and declared – without laying out a specific plan – that Canada expects to hit the 2% threshold by 2032. Twenty-three NATO members were expected to be at or above the threshold in 2024, a record, after a spending spike among European members following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The existence of Canada’s military

Trump said of Canada on Tuesday: “They don’t, essentially, have a military. They have a very small military.” He repeated on Thursday­: “They have virtually no military. They have a very small military.”

Facts First: Canadian defense experts and the Canadian government itself have raised concerns about the size and readiness of Canada’s military, but that military very much exists – with more than 63,000 regular servicemembers as of fall 2024, plus more than 20,000 reservists. The Canadian military has fought alongside the US military in the war in Afghanistan (in which more than 150 Canadian troops died), the war against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, the Gulf War, the Korean War and both world wars (in which tens of thousands of Canadian troops died), in addition to participating in other wars and peacekeeping missions. The Canadian military and US military jointly operate the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and conduct numerous other activities together, including ongoing strategic initiatives in Latvia and the South China Sea.

We won’t render a fact-check verdict here because Trump qualified his claims with the words “essentially” and “virtually.” And he’s entitled to question, as Canadian politicians have, whether Canada’s military is strong enough. But Canada certainly isn’t comparable to military-free Iceland.

“Canada’s military is not NATO’s largest, but it has regularly made significant contributions, such as holding down Kandahar, one of the toughest places in Afghanistan, with little help until Obama’s surge. It is playing a significant role as the leader of the NATO effort in Latvia,” Saideman said. “It is in the middle of a major recapitalization effort that will give it 88 F-35s, 15 frigates, and more. So, smaller than it should be? Sure. Very small? No. None? Not at all.”

Canada, Russia and China

Trump claimed in a social media post last Monday that if Canada “merged” with the US, Canada would, among other things, “be TOTALLY SECURE from the threat of the Russian and Chinese Ships that are constantly surrounding them.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. Canada, which has the world’s largest coastline, has never been surrounded by Russian and Chinese ships, let alone been “constantly” surrounded. In fact, a smattering of Russian and Chinese military ships and jets, as well as Chinese research vessels viewed with suspicion by Canada and the US, have been occasionally spotted in recent years in the vicinity of Alaska – and have been monitored or intercepted by the Canadian and US militaries.

The Canadian government warned in December that among the “potential threats” in its Arctic region were “increased Russian activity in Canadian air approaches” and “China’s regular deployment of dual-use – having both research and military application – research vessels and surveillance platforms to collect data.” But a Canadian expert on Arctic security, Trent University professor P. Whitney Lackenbauer, said “there is absolutely no open source evidence that Canada is constantly surrounded by Russian and Chinese ships.” He said Trump’s claim is “misinformation” unless he is disclosing some unknown classified intelligence.

Lackenbauer said in an email: “When Chinese vessels have entered Canadian Arctic waters to conduct marine scientific research, they have acquired the requisite permits from the Government of Canada. There are no Russian fishing vessels (or intelligence-collecting boats masquerading as fishing vessels) active in Canadian waters like there are off the coast of Alaska – a simple glance at the map of the Arctic will explain the difference in geographical proximity – and there have been no Chinese-Russian joint exercises in or near Canadian waters as there have been off the coast of Alaska.”

Arctic security expert Rob Huebert, interim director of the University of Calgary’s Centre for Military Security and Strategic Studies, said in an interview that Chinese military ships have come “much closer” to the US than Canada. He added: “If you’re talking about the real geography, you guys are more threatened right now than we are, with the Aleutian Islands … Technically speaking, the vessels that you are talking about are actually coming up and surrounding Alaska, not Canada.”

Huebert argued that the Trump administration would itself worsen the Chinese and Russian naval threat to Canada in the Arctic if it decided to aggressively press the longstanding US argument that Canada’s claim to the Northwest Passage is “illegitimate,” as Trump’s then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared in 2019, and that the passage is actually international waters.

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