More than 200,000 people from Canada have signed a parliamentary petition calling for their country to strip Elon Musk’s Canadian citizenship because of the tech billionaire’s alliance with Donald Trump, who has spent his second US presidency repeatedly threatening to conquer its independent neighbor to the north and turn it into its 51st state.
The British Columbia author Qualia Reed launched the petition in Canada’s House of Commons, where it was sponsored by the New Democrat parliamentary member and avowed Musk critic Charlie Angus, as the Canadian Press first reported over the weekend.
Born in South Africa and owning US companies including the electric vehicle-maker Tesla, aerospace company SpaceX and the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), Musk has Canadian citizenship through his mother: model and dietitian Maye Musk, who is from Saskatchewan’s capital, Regina. He has been crusading to slash the US federal government’s size at the behest of the US president, who has consistently challenged Canada’s sovereignty since returning to the White House for a second presidential term on 20 January.
Reed’s petition – filed on 20 February – accuses Musk of having “engaged in activities that go against the national interest of Canada” by acting as an adviser to Trump. Trump has invited the scorn of Canada’s 40 million residents by making threats about imposing steep tariffs on Canadian products and openly boasting about having the US annex the country, including shortly before its national hockey team defeated a selection of US opponents in a politically charged 20 February tournament final.
The petition asserts that Musk’s alignment with Trump makes him “a member of a foreign government that is attempting to erase Canadian sovereignty”. It asks the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to take away Musk’s Canadian passport and revoke his citizenship with immediate effect.
Trump has often mocked Trudeau as “governor”, the title given to US states’ chief executives. And Musk wrote on X, the social media platform he bought in 2022 for $44bn to relish Trudeau’s announcement in January that he would resign as the head of Canada’s Liberal party after it selected a new leader, with the tech billionaire praising clips of the Canadian Conservative party chief, Pierre Poilievre.
As the Canadian Press noted, petitions like Reed’s require 500 or more signatures for them to gain the certification necessary to be presented to Canada’s House of Commons and potentially garner a formal government response. Reed’s petition evidently had no trouble clearing that threshold, having collected about 203,000 signatures as of early Monday, with no indication that the number would soon stop rising.
Canada’s House of Commons is scheduled to resume its work on 24 March, though the country could call for a general election before parliamentary members return. The signing period for Reed’s petition was set to expire on 20 June.
As Canada’s CTV News reported, the country can revoke citizenship in certain cases, including in instances of fraud, people’s misrepresenting themselves or intentionally withholding information on an immigration or citizenship application. A person can also renounce their citizenship for various reasons, according to Canadian law.
A person whose Canadian citizenship is revoke must wait 10 years to get it back again, CTV News added.
Musk’s directive to ostensibly cut federal spending – after Trump lost re-election in 2020 to Joe Biden but then secured it in November at the expense of Kamala Harris – has affected hundreds of thousands of US government civil servants. The cuts include thousands at the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Defense and Health and Human Services, the Internal Revenue Service and the National Parks Service, among others.
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An Economist/YouGov poll of nearly 1,600 respondents recently found Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) are far less popular with the public that they claim to be serving than many of the areas they are targeting.
Nonetheless, on Friday at a gathering of conservatives in Maryland, Musk made light of his involvement in the Trump administration by giddily waving a giant chainsaw in the air.
And on Sunday, Musk boosted an X post reading: “Of course we support Doge! Those who don’t support it are unAmerican.”
Source: theguardian.com
