Greater than 150,000 folks from Canada have signed a parliamentary petition calling for his or her nation to strip Elon Musk’s Canadian citizenship due to the tech billionaire’s alliance with Donald Trump, who has spent his second US presidency repeatedly threatening to beat its impartial neighbor to the north and switch it into its 51st state.
British Columbia creator Qualia Reed launched the petition in Canada’s Home of Commons, the place it was sponsored by New Democrat parliamentary member and avowed Musk critic Charlie Angus, as the Canadian Press first reported over the weekend.
Born in South Africa and helming US corporations together with electrical vehicle-maker Tesla, aerospace firm SpaceX and the social media platform Twitter/X, Musk has Canadian citizenship via his mom, who’s from Saskatchewan’s capital, Regina. He has been crusading to slash the US federal authorities’s measurement on the behest of the US president, who has persistently challenged Canada’s sovereignty since returning to the White Home for a second presidential time period on 20 January.
Reed’s petition – filed on 20 February – accuses Musk of getting “engaged in actions that go in opposition to the nationwide curiosity of Canada” by appearing 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 merchandise and brazenly boasting about having the US annex the nation, together with shortly earlier than its nationwide hockey workforce defeated a choice of American opponents in a politically charged 20 February match last.
The petition asserts that Musk’s alignment with Trump makes him “a member of a international authorities that’s trying to erase Canadian sovereignty”. It asks Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau to remove Musk’s Canadian passport and revoke his citizenship with fast impact.
Trump has usually mocked Trudeau as “governor”, the title given to US states’ chief executives. And Musk wrote on X, the social media platform he purchased in 2022 for $44bn to relish Trudeau’s announcement in January that he would resign as the top of Canada’s Liberal celebration after it chosen a brand new chief, with the tech billionaire praising clips of the outstanding Canadian Conservative celebration chief Pierre Poilievre.
Because the Canadian Press famous, petitions like Reed’s require 500 or extra signatures for them to achieve the certification essential to be offered to Canada’s Home of Commons and probably garner a proper authorities response. Reed’s petition evidently had no hassle clearing that threshold, having collected about 157,000 signatures as of late Sunday, with no indication that the quantity would quickly cease rising.
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Canada’s Home of Commons is scheduled to renew its work on 24 March, although the nation might name for a normal election earlier than parliamentary members return. The signing interval for Reed’s petition was set to run out on 20 June.
Musk’s directive to ostensibly reduce federal spending – after Trump misplaced re-election in 2020 to Joe Biden however then secured it in November on the expense of Kamala Harris – has affected lots of of hundreds of US authorities civil servants. The cuts embrace hundreds on the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Protection, Well being and Human Companies, the Inside Income Service and the Nationwide Parks Service, amongst others.
An Economist/YouGov ballot of practically 1,600 respondents not too long ago discovered Musk and his so-called “division of presidency effectivity” (Doge) are far much less standard with the general public that they declare to be serving than lots of the areas they’re focusing on.
Nonetheless, on Friday at a gathering of conservatives in Maryland, Musk made gentle of his involvement within the Trump administration by giddily waving a large chainsaw within the air.
And on Sunday, Musk boosted an X publish studying: “After all we assist Doge! Those that don’t assist it are unAmerican.”
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