Brennan Day, who serves in British Columbia’s Legislative Assembly as a member of the Conservative Party, said he received Martin’s letter and was not sure how many other officials received it.
“Honestly, I couldn’t believe it’s legitimate, but we reached out to [Martin’s] office,” Day told a Vancouver radio station. “It is a legitimate memo.”
Martin, who served his first term in the Maine Senate this year and is retired from a career in the international mineral extraction industry, did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Day posted Aug. 6 to Facebook an open response to Martin’s letter that said it “reads like a recruitment brochure for a political ideology,” and Day told Martin “you are operating well outside of your lane sir, so allow me to operate well outside of mine.”
Day took offense to several parts of Martin’s letter, including the Maine senator’s reference to “Canadian political baggage” and how the provinces becoming states would feature no “British monarchism, no bilingual federal documents [and] no imported bureaucracies.”
If the provinces became U.S. states, Martin also wrote that for “millions of people currently frustrated by central authority, moral decay, and bureaucratic suffocation, that reward is liberty.”
Day told Martin he holds “deep respect” for the U.S. and its citizens, but the Canadian lawmaker said the letter “lands more as a manifesto of arrogance.”
“Your letter is a perfect example of what many Canadians find so deeply troubling about the American worldview — assuming that what works for you must be the solution for everyone else,” Day added.
This could have been a gas, if he had a friendlier relation to the recipient and it wasn't quite so measured. And if weren't such a trying time politically.
Basically if he'd hammed it up a bunch and worked both the timing and audience better, he coulda had something.
An American politician joking about annexing Canada isn't something we would ever find funny, no matter how it was timed. I don't think you understand quite how seriously Canadians take American threats to our sovereignty, joking or otherwise.
I can't think of a topic we find less funny. I think that Americans fundamentally understand that because they're generally unaware of how many times they've already tried and failed. In US schools, Manifest Destiny is taught as a good thing. There's not a lick of consideration for the people being manifested. It has all the comedy inherent in telling your buddy that you're going to try to bang his wife.
Assuming it's just a joke is a bit of a take.
I'm certain it wasn't, but in these trying times I have to try not assuming the worst of people.
Me too, when the meds haven't worn off.
Just kidding, I haven't been on meds for ^years^.