Should P.E.I. Consider its Own U.S. Agreement?

 By Henry Srebrnik, Charlottetown Guardian, March 20, 2025

From the time I taught Island Studies at the University of Prince Edward Island, I have pointed to the American compact of free association with three small sovereign states in the South Pacific as a potential model for Prince Edward Island were Canada to fall apart.

Before you scoff, remember, nothing is impossible. Every empire in history has come and gone; in the last century, major states such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia disintegrated. Few people a decade earlier saw that coming.

And when, since the 19^th century, has an American head of state broached the idea of acquiring Canada as the “fifty-first state,” and putting immense pressure on the country via tariffs?

The notion that Canada would somehow willingly incorporate itself into the United States was widely treated as a joke when Donald Trump first raised it. But he has continued to harp on the topic to the point where it seems increasingly clear that he is serious.

“The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State,” he wrote on social media recently. “This would make all tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear.” He added, in reference to the northern border, “the artificial line of separation drawn many years ago will finally disappear, and we will have the safest and most beautiful nation anywhere in the world.”

Let’s face it: As Aris Roussinos, a columnist for the British website UnHerd and a former war reporter, wrote recently, “Trump’s annexation threats to Canada derive from Canada making itself so interwoven, economically and in security terms, with the U.S. that its independence is essentially fictional.”

Many now think the Justin Trudeau decade has been a disaster for Canada, economically, but even more so politically. He ran the country as his own personal hobby, denouncing all opponents as peddlers of “hate.” All this has led up to the current confrontation between Trudeau’s “woke world” and the new anti-DEI United States administration. Call it the cunning reason of history.

Is Donald Trump the final act, come to pick up the pieces, the way Fortinbras does in the final scene of “Hamlet,” when everyone else is dead? And is it too late for Mark Carney, uncrowned pretender to the throne, to save the country?

Should such a disaster strike Canada – certainly Trump likes the idea! -- the eastern provinces would be hardest hit. There would be no more transfer payments coming mostly from an Alberta, which would either go it alone as a sovereign entity or join the U.S. And we would be geographically blocked from Ontario by an obviously independent Quebec.

And so I have asked students to look at the Compact of Free Association model with the U.S. for a little island like P.E.I., which perhaps would find itself not even part of a potential “Maritime Union” but might find itself an island micro-state. We’d be literally adrift in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.

I have written about this before but clearly it was a far-fetched possibility, a kind of political doomsday scenario. Now, though, thanks to the “Trump Effect,” this idea has gained traction in another potential micro-state (in terms of population), Greenland. Trump insists he’s serious about acquiring the island. It has entered the realm of debate.

Greenland’s critical role in American security is equal to, if not greater than, that of the Pacific Freely Associated States of Palau, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia. And this would be even more so the case for P.E.I. were Canada to fail.

These Pacific islands after they acquired independence -- they were American-ruled UN Trust Territories following the Second World War -- each entered into a Compact of Free Association (COFA) with Washington, conveying to the latter exclusive military access to their territory and, critically, the right to deny such access to other powers.

In return, the “freely associated” states receive substantial economic development assistance and investment from the United States. The benefits of a COFA to its signatories include the opportunity for their residents to reside and work in the United States and be eligible for Federal programs and services.

Additionally, the COFA provides economic assistance for fifteen or twenty years, including the establishment of an economic trust fund and sectoral assistance for education, health, the environment, public sector capacity-building, private sector development, and infrastructure.

The United States is obligated to defend the Compact countries against outside coercion or aggression, and it allows for the stationing of U.S. military personnel. The three nations also have seats at the United Nations and numerous other international organizations. It represents a mutually beneficial agreement bolstering the national interests of all parties. Yes, it seems you can have your cake and eat it too!