'There's no Canadian dream': Meet some who want Canada to become the 51st U.S. state
CBC
Jordon Kosikowie has been thinking a lot about what would happen if Alberta joined the United States.
The 35-year-old works in the oil and gas industry in the Edmonton area and says life has been hard in recent years. So he's open to the idea if it brings more prosperity.
"If there's an opportunity for me to put more money into my pocket, why not converse about it?" said Kosikowie, who runs a Facebook group for Albertans who want to be a part of a 51st U.S. state. The group has grown to 1,000 members since it was created a few months ago.
"There's no Canadian dream. I still don't foresee myself owning a home."
Kosikowie represents a small fraction of Canadians who say they would vote to join the U.S. in a referendum, said Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute.
An online institute survey of 1,653 Canadian adults in January suggested 90 per cent wouldn't vote for Canada to become a 51st state in a hypothetical referendum.
"The 90 per cent is significant," she said.
"That really does speak to a consensus that crosses political lines, demographic lines, regional lines, age and gender demographics, and it's basically the only thing that Canadians agree on right now."
But it also suggests 10 per cent of Canadians would want to join the U.S.
An online Leger poll released in March said nine per cent of Canadians want Canada to become the 51st state. Support was highest in Alberta at 15 per cent.
The online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.
Kurl said her survey suggests those in favour of joining the U.S. are mostly conservative men living in Alberta and Saskatchewan, and those who might vote for fringe parties and are "diet MAGA," referring to U.S. President Donald Trump's Make America Great Again movement.
"We're talking about slices of the population on the margins," she said.
Kosikowie said he would want Alberta to join the U.S. because more conservatives live in Alberta and Albertans are opportunistic.
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