Just as it seemed the 51st state talk from south of the border had cooled off, Courtenay-Comox MLA Brennan Day says he received a letter from a Maine State Senator suggesting Western provinces join the U.S.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, I couldn\u2019t believe it\u2019s legitimate, but we reached out to his office. It is a legitimate memo,\u201d said MLA Day in an interview with 1130 NewsRadio.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not entirely sure why it was sent or who it was sent to, but I assume other elected officials across the country got it as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Day says that the letter, penned by Republican Senator Joseph E. Martin from Maine, is concerning as it oversteps his position as a state-level senator.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s concerning what he has to say in regard to Canadian sovereignty,\u201d Day said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is a state-level senator, so he has way overstepped his boundaries here, speaking for the country. And I certainly know most Americans I know don\u2019t share his feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n
UBC Political Science Professor Stewart Prest says the letter, laying out conditions for provinces joining the U.S, is just another example of throwing American weight around.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one is asking to join the United States with special Canadian conditions; it\u2019s just making up a piece of a conversation that doesn\u2019t exist,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
Day says that the letter \u201creads like a recruitment brochure for a political ideology, not a sincere offer to neighbours.\u201d<\/p>\n
With files from Ben Bouguerra.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just as it seemed the 51st state talk from south of the border had cooled off, Courtenay-Comox MLA…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":139008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2147,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-139007","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-canada","9":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}