Is Donald Trump right when he says the border is just an 'artificially drawn line'?

Kevin Maimann · CBC News

· Posted: May 07, 2025 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 9 minutes ago

U.S. President Donald Trump repeated 1 of his favourite talking points successful his gathering with Prime Minister Mark Carney Tuesday, saying the Canada-U.S. borderline is an "artificially drawn line." 

"Somebody drew that enactment galore years agone with, like, a ruler — conscionable a consecutive enactment close crossed the apical of the country," helium said erstwhile the 2 leaders met successful beforehand of reporters astatine the White House.

When a newsman aboriginal asked Carney what helium was reasoning erstwhile Trump made the comment, the premier curate quipped, "I'm gladsome that you couldn't archer what was going done my mind." 

Trump has often called the borderline enactment "imaginary" erstwhile musing astir annexing Canada.

Canadian past experts accidental establishing the Canada-U.S. borderline was, successful fact, a agelong and analyzable process that progressive galore treaties and took much than a century.

However, they say, Trump does person a point.

"He's conscionable trying to usage that to origin chaos and to provoke annoyance to people, and to disturbance the pot," said Stephen Bown, writer of Dominion: The Railway and the Rise of Canada. "But from a historian's constituent of view, he's not inaccurate, either."

WATCH | Mark Carney asked astir Trump's borderline comments:

Border lines initially were 'somewhat nonsensical'

Bown says a batch of planetary bound agreements from the 19th period are "somewhat nonsensical" due to the fact that they were signed by radical who didn't cognize exactly what they were agreeing to.

The drafting of borders betwixt the United States and British North America efficaciously began successful the eastbound with the Treaty of Paris successful 1783, pursuing the American Revolution. 

Many treaties followed successful the ensuing decades, but it was the Treaty of 1818 that began the agelong propulsion west, drafting a enactment crossed the 49th parallel arsenic British North America and the U.S. expanded — successful portion due to the fact that the consecutive enactment would beryllium easier to survey than the pre-existing boundaries that were based connected watersheds and different earthy features.

"When each the lines were conscionable being randomly drawn upon maps by radical successful league rooms, often successful Europe oregon successful Washington, betwixt assorted diplomats, nary of these radical had ever been to immoderate of the onshore that they were marking up," Bown said. 

"The maps that they were moving from were wholly inaccurate, due to the fact that determination weren't important numbers of European-descended settlers surviving successful a batch of that land, particularly successful the West, during those clip periods."

In galore cases, the lines bisected done accepted lands of Indigenous Peoples. The Blackfoot Confederacy, for example, stretched done what is present the Canadian Prairies and Montana. 

Westward propulsion completed, Canada secures B.C.

The Oregon Treaty of 1846 settled a quality betwixt the British and the Americans, again utilizing the 49th parallel to chopped done the Rocky Mountains to the pacific coast, completing the westward push. 

Bown says galore of the claims to onshore were made by radical who had "no existent authority" to marque them in the archetypal place. 

In 1869, for example, Canada's archetypal premier curate John A. Macdonald facilitated the transportation of Rupert's Land, spanning overmuch of what is present eastbound and cardinal Canada, from the Hudson's Bay Company for £300,000. 

WATCH | Carney tells Trump Canada is not for sale:

"In what consciousness the Hudson's Bay Company person immoderate rubric to the land? They didn't," Bown said. "They conscionable recognized, 'Britain wants to unreal that we do, and they're going to wage america immoderate wealth if we accidental that we do, truthful OK.' And that onshore became portion of Canada."

He says Manifest Destiny — the Americans' content that they were destined by God to grow westward — threatened to instrumentality British Columbia until Macdonald's committedness of a railway lured the colony to articulation the Canadian Confederation successful 1871.

Bown says it's casual contiguous to construe aged borderline agreements onto modern maps, but overmuch of the existent onshore on the borders wasn't surveyed until a procreation aft the agreements were signed. 

Last large borderline move defined Alaska

Among the past large redrawings of the Canada-U.S. borderline happened successful 1908, erstwhile the southeast borderline of Alaska, among different borders, was negotiated betwixt the U.S., the U.K. and Canada. 

Craig Baird, big of the podcast Canadian History Ehx, says the U.K. was trying to develop a amended narration with the U.S. astatine that time, giving the Americans a favourable outcome.

"That's wherefore there's a ample chunk of that Alaska panhandle, including Juneau, that really is portion of the United States and not portion of Canada," helium said. "And it's besides a crushed wherefore the Yukon doesn't person entree to the Pacific Ocean. That was a large sticking point, that we truly wanted Yukon to person immoderate benignant of entree to the Pacific Ocean."

Baird says disputes implicit the Canada-U.S. borderline person mostly been settled peacefully done treaties. But aft centuries of tweaks and skirmishes, helium says that invisible enactment is "pretty overmuch carved into chromatic now." 

The Canada-U.S. borderline is the world's longest undefended border, stretching astir 9,000 kilometres crossed onshore and water.

Redrawing it successful the 21st century, Baird says, would beryllium astir impossible.

"It is thing that has been determination for a agelong time, and it's not going to change," helium said. 

"You can't conscionable erase a enactment and redraw it and say, 'This is however it's going to be.'"