When America Tried to Win Canada

US President Donald Trump has destroyed quite a few Canadian illusions about the bilateral relationship in his 18 months in power. Perhaps the biggest was that Canada and the United States were actual friends and not just neighbours with temporarily aligned interests. Another was that Canadians could remain aloof and relatively untouched by whatever chaos he stirred up south of the border. He put paid to that with his direct attacks on Canada’s sovereignty through his talk of it becoming the 51^st state and on Canada’s economy through his capricious application of punitive tariffs. Taking a lead from their boss, administration officials are meddling in the destabilizing Alberta separatism debate.

This is not the first time Americans have tried to influence how Canadians are governed. In 1774, delegates to the Continental Congress used spies, propaganda, and local sympathizers to persuade the inhabitants of Canada they should reject British rule and become the 14^th colony. When that failed to produce the desired result, they invaded. There are lessons from that 250-year-old failure that could prove useful in fending off the latest assault.

The American Parallel

American actions then and now do not all fit neatly into the definition of foreign influence used by policymakers in the current debate. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Public Safety Canada, and the 2025 report of the Public Inquiry Into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions all emphasize covert or illegal activities when they define foreign influence or interference. Yet according to a recent report into foreign interference in the Alberta referendum campaign, American involvement is “overt, escalating and converging at multiple levels.” The 1774 efforts were a mix of overt and covert, to use the current terminology.

There was nothing clandestine about the letter the Continental Congress wrote to the “Inhabitants of the Province of Quebec” in October 1774, inviting them to unite with the 13 Colonies to resist so-called British tyranny. 

Their promise to allow the continued practice of Roman Catholicism was disingenuous, given they harshly criticized it as “a religion that has deluged your island in blood and spread impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder, and rebellion throughout every part of the world” in a separate letter to the British people sent around the same time. They did describe the system of governance used in the American colonies and suggested the French Canadians, who made up the bulk of the population, do the same. If they complied, the Americans would be their “unalterable friends.” If not, they would become their “inveterate enemies.”

This overt solicitation was supplemented by the covert activity of a network of agents and local sympathizers, many of them American merchants who had moved north after Britain conquered New France in 1760. Members of the network spread the congressional letter throughout the British colony, sometimes posing as horse or grain traders. Local sympathizers, such as James Price, Moses Hazen, Prudent Lajeunesse, and Christophe Pélissier passed information and advice to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, either in person or by letter. 

The French Canadians did not respond. The Roman Catholic clergy and seigneurs, who formed the colonial elite, got what they wanted when the 1774 Quebec Act restored their rights and privileges and allowed the practise of the Catholic religion. The clergy openly preached loyalty to Britain and refused to marry or bury those who supported the American cause. Jean-Olivier Briand, bishop of Quebec, issued a pastoral letter in May 1775, urging the faithful to “close their ears” to sedition and remain loyal to the British king.

A frustrated Congress wrote a second letter to French Canadians with the same message of friendship coupled with menace in May 1775, and a third in January 1776. Colonial assemblies in Massachusetts and New York chimed in with similar missives in February and May 1775, respectively. Rebel military leaders added their voices in September 1775 as the Continental Army invaded Canada. George Washington, Philip Schuyler, and Richard Montgomery all wrote open letters to the French Canadians, claiming they wanted to give them freedom, and assuring them their property would be respected. 

When the majority of French Canadians remained unpersuaded, Congress sent a three-man delegation led by Benjamin Franklin to Montreal to make the case in person. He had already spent decades arguing that Canada be joined to the other British colonies. His party included a French-born printer to produce American propaganda on his printing press and a Catholic priest, carefully chosen to demonstrate the American colonists had nothing against Catholics, when in fact they were discriminated against in most of the 13 colonies. Franklin and friends were instructed to set up a new government when they arrived.

The Limits of Persuasion 

The Americans had some early success with the inhabitants or ordinary people, who readily sold them food and initially refused to fight for Britain. Rumours spread by the agents and sympathizers that the governor was planning to impose new taxes, had sold them to the Spanish or was planning to ship them to Boston to fight found willing believers. The balance eventually shifted in Britain’s favour when the American troops ran out of money and tried to pay for necessities with a new continental paper currency, which the French Canadians refused to take, or seized goods without payment. The promises to respect French-Canadian property were forgotten.

There was of course British counter-propaganda, spread from the pulpit by the pro-British clergy, printed in the government-owned Quebec Gazette, and supplied by local sympathizers. The Gazette published a series of anonymous letters that countered American claims or pointed to the dubious letter from Congress that denounced Roman Catholicism. Simon Sanguinet, a notary from Montreal, wrote an open letter to his fellow French Canadians in March 1776 chastising them for being ingrates and bowing to the tyrannical Bostonnais, a common term for all American colonists.

By the time the invaders were chased out of Canada in June 1776 by newly arrived British reinforcements and the Canadian militia, they were extremely unpopular. But it had been a close call. And their propaganda campaign left a mark on the minds of French Canadians. Guy Carleton, the British governor, complained to his superiors in May 1777 there was a “Spirit of Licentiousness and Independence” in the colony. It would take some time, he wrote, to reduce the French Canadians to “the state of obedience which they formerly paid their ancient government.”

Echoes in Alberta 

While not an exact fit, the current influence campaign in Alberta has similarities to that first endeavour by Americans to alter Canadian governance. At the most basic level, both were fuelled by the American conviction that they had a right to interfere. During backchannel negotiations with the British government in 1775, Franklin told the British representative that Americans should have a say in how the northern colony was governed because colonial troops helped Britain conquer it in 1760 “at great expense of blood and treasure.” Trump’s embrace of the Monroe Doctrine makes the entire Western Hemisphere part of the American zone of influence, at least in his mind.

The Continental Congress led the earlier influence campaign. Trump’s open talk of Canada becoming the 51^st state has provided direction, if not organization, for the current one. The comment by his treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, that Alberta and the US are “natural partners” and that Albertans want what the US has, gave high-level encouragement to the idea. Influencers aligned with the Trump administration have readily spread the message online. The misinformation they add to the mix are modern versions of the groundless rumours spread by the agents and sympathizers who circulated official letters in 1774-75.

The residents of Canada who travelled to Philadelphia to inform and advise the Continental Congress have their counterparts in the members of the pro-separatist group Alberta Prosperity Project, who travelled to Washington several times to meet with people at the State Department. On the covert side, there are reports of American funding and American technology being used in the Alberta separatist campaign. The Continental Congress paid the agents and sympathizers of earlier times. The printing press the delegates sent along with Franklin was advanced technology in its day.

The Lesson for Canada 

The most salient lesson from this earlier incident is how Carleton, the British governor, courted the colony’s elite. He pushed the British parliament to pass the Quebec Act, which calmed the fears of the clergy and large landowners. They in turn supported Britain when American forces invaded, persuading enough French Canadians to either remain neutral or fight alongside British troops to stave off a quick American victory. Had the French Canadians flocked in great numbers to the American invaders, the British colony would have fallen quickly.

Carleton did this even though the Quebec Act, which allowed the practice of Roman Catholicism, went against his principles as a Protestant. Britain still had laws in place that discriminated against Catholics. But he concluded that without such toleration Canada would be ungovernable.

Prime Minister Mark Carney, once known as a champion of the environment, appears to have made a similar calculation in his decision to back a new pipeline for oil-rich Alberta. He admitted in his latest Forward Guidance video that climate change is worsening and that his government’s plan will lead to higher greenhouse gas emissions in the short term. Without being explicit, he suggested he had to put his principles aside to keep the country together. The old climate change plan, he said, “was an open opportunity for those people who wish to pull Canada apart both at home and from abroad.” 

Will this be enough to persuade influential Albertans to support Canadian unity instead of division encouraged by some Americans? That remains an open question.