How would the US government respond if California, Oregon, and Washington overwhelmingly passed propositions to secede and form a new country, or join Canada?

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They’d probably ignore the propositions. There is no legal way to secede from the United States. The politicians would weigh in, of course, but the enforcement organs of the nations are set up only to respond to the violations of law that they’re chartered to enforce, and passing a proposition is not in itself illegal.

Now, if the states in question started actually doing something about those propositions, such as withholding tax revenue, then I feel the most likely outcome is a declaration of a national state of emergency and a military occupation of the capitals of all three states. This is consistent with the view that “war is politics continued through other means.”

The US military is controlled at the national level and not the state level, it is unlikely that the governors of each state could get more than their respective National Guards to defect, and the National Guard cannot do much without the rest of the armed forces. As such there it is not likely for there to be any actual hostilities.

Legal secession would require an amendment to the Constitution.