More than 250,000 Canadian citizens and residents have signed a parliamentary petition urging Canada to revoke Elon Musk’s citizenship and passport.
Musk’s association with US President Donald Trump, who plans to levy a 25% tariff on all Canadian imports next month and who has proposed annexing the country as the 51st state, is “against the national interest of Canada,” the petitioners claim.
The tech billionaire, a citizen of South African, Canada, and the US, has become one of Trump’s most visible allies since the 47th president began his second term last month.
“He has used his wealth and power to influence our elections,” the petition claims. “He has now become a member of a foreign government that is attempting to erase Canadian sovereignty.”
The petition, addressed to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, demands that he “revoke Elon Musk’s dual citizenship status, and revoke his Canadian passport effective immediately.”
Musk, who was born in Pretoria, South Africa, has previously said that he obtained a Canadian passport as a teenager through his mother, Maye Musk, who was born in Canada. The billionaire later obtained US citizenship a decade after arriving in the US on a student visa.
An electronic parliamentary petition requires the initial support of at least five Canadians, the authorization of a member of parliament, and an initial review before it can start to gather signatures, according to Canada’s House of Commons.
The petition to revoke Musk’s citizenship is open until June 20, 2025, after which the clerk of petitions will have to certify that at least 500 of its signatures are legitimate. From there, the petition must wait until a new session of parliament opens before it can be presented to the House of Commons for debate.
Reed, a sci fi author from British Columbia, wrote Monday on social networking site Bluesky that they “never expected this petition to spread so far and so fast.” Reed also underlined to the petition’s growing number of supporters that it was not meant to be a personal attack.
“To (be) clear, this action I started, and all of you are spreading and growing, isn’t about personal attacks,” Reed wrote, “It’s about ensuring that those who influence global policies and industries know that the people are not okay with their lack of ethical responsibility.”
Trump’s frequent voicing of his desire to make Canada the “51st state,” has gone as far as mocking Trudeau on social media as the “Governor” of Canada. In early February, Trudeau warned a gathering of private sector executives that Trump’s threat to annex Canada “is a real thing,” according to two business leaders who heard the prime minister’s remarks.
There are few precedents for citizenship revocation in Canada. Thousands of Japanese Canadians, including citizens, were “effectively denationalized” during World War II and deported back to Japan, according to University of Toronto law professor Audrey Macklin in a 2021 article for the Manitoba Law Review.
A 2014 law called the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act previously included provisions to revoke citizenship if a dual-national Canadian was convicted of “national security offenses.”
Trudeau promised to repeal the law when he ran for prime minister. By 2017, the denaturalization provisions were removed, and a new law re-nationalized any Canadian stripped of their citizenship on national security grounds.